


Power Play

by tfm



Series: Creatures of the Night [1]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robot, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-09
Updated: 2009-07-09
Packaged: 2017-10-08 04:32:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 44
Words: 45,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tensions are running high when a vampire joins the BAU, but all differences must be put aside as the team investigate a series of suspicious werewolf murders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The reserve’s official name is the William Kenbridge Lycanthrope Sanctuary. The local shapeshifters call it the playground. It’s where, once a month (or sometimes twice) every lycanthrope for twenty miles around comes to shift. They strip off their clothing, and transform under the light of the full moon. The other twenty-nine odd days of the month, it’s simply a park, albeit a park that does not allow visitors. Occasionally, a member of the pack will visit the playground at another time, but they are only permitted to do so after having signed in with both the leader of the pack, and the local liaison. It’s a system designed to protect both the pack, and the surrounding population.__

Because God knows there are enough dangerous things in the world.

Tonight, it’s two weeks out from the full moon, and the playground is not empty.

Michael Joseph Conrad was not born a werewolf. There are no born werewolves. Sometimes a half-wolf, or a quarter-wolf is born, but never one that has only a shapeshifter’s blood running through their veins; a fetus could never survive that painstaking transformation from human to beast.

Thanks to the stringent laws put in place by the government, every werewolf, every vampire, every fairy wizard with a bad haircut is required to be registered with and monitored by the Department of Health and Human Services. The name is a misnomer really; there’s hardly anyone left in the world that’s fully human, and just as few of them are in need of healthcare. After all, there’s not much that can stop a silver bullet. Because of these laws, there are only two surefire ways to become a werewolf.

The first, and most common method, is to be a foolhardy traveler who has the misfortune to encounter a rogue wolf; a wolf that barely even remembers how to be human anymore, and thinks that everything with a heartbeat is fair game. The second way is to voluntarily become a wolf; to fill in a requisition form with the Department for a werewolf in a dark suit to knock on your door, make you fill out a waiver, and then take a big chunk out of your arm. This is a far less common occurrence, for one simple reason; lycanthropy is incurable. A wolf is a wolf for life, and life can be a very long time for some lycanthropes. Sometimes the only way out is a silver bullet to the head. A silver knife to the heart.

Michael Conrad found himself on the wrong end of a rogue wolf, in another place, another time. Now he’s found himself on the wrong end of a knife. The silver poisons his body in the way that no traditional toxin ever could. He is being poisoned from the inside out, his body wasting away. __

Silver is a death knell to a werewolf, in the same way that holy water is to a vampire, or cold iron is to a fairy. It affects different lycanthropes in different ways – sometimes the body dies almost instantly, sometimes it spends hours writhing, trying to get that poison out of its system.

The death of Michael Conrad is not quick. His howls go unnoticed, mistaken for the calls of the rogue wolves that inhabit the surrounding woodlands. Not even government crackdowns are enough to kill them all.

He can feel the hair along his spine raising, body refusing to commit to either state; at this point, he is part man, part wolf, and shifting endlessly between the two states. It’s an episode that persists until the last breath finally escapes his body.

*          *          *

Aaron Hotchner stares blankly at his supervisor.

On his Driver’s License, his government I.D., his passport, the “species” section reads: Human. He, the same as 2.8% of the rest of the population of the world, has no supernatural ability whatsoever to put to his name. He doesn’t mind. In fact, he’s silently proud of the fact that he has been able to make it so far in life on his own two feet. Unfortunately, though, it does make encounters such as these difficult.

He watches as Erin Strauss runs a tongue along her slightly pointed fangs. She isn’t interested in his blood – no openly rogue vampire would ever last in government. She’s out to get him in a much subtler sense. For a vampire, she isn’t that old – maybe eighty or ninety max – but she knows how to play the game. And she knows how to piss Hotch off.

‘You can’t be serious,’ he says, staring at the file in front of him; the newest member of his team, it seems. The last person he would ever have chosen were he the one making the decision. Truth told, he doesn’t know her. He’s never met her. But he has had far more experience than he would have liked with her family. By definition, they are rogues, but their ties are so strong that that none have ever dared bringing them up on charges. __

‘Am I ever not serious?’ Strauss asks him. Her skin is pale, as though she is in need of some good old-fashioned Vitamin D. He knows that if he opened the blinds, there would soon be a smoldering pile of ash sitting in the Section Chief’s chair. She’s nowhere near powerful enough to brave the sunlight. The best she can hope for is the imitation bulbs that occupy the room’s light fixtures. They’re almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Almost.

‘I’ve had dealings with her family,’ Hotch protests. It’s a mild word for the occurrences of the past. Dealings. He still has the scars.

‘There is evidence to show that she has relinquished contact with her family.’ Strauss narrows her eyes, as if unimpressed with the thought of someone doing so. ‘Emancipated herself, if you will. I assure you, Agent Hotchner, this decision was not mine to make.’ It’s a statement with some bite to it, no pun intended. Strauss is saying, quite simply, that she isn’t particularly happy about this situation either. That she’d sooner send this new agent to the grave than bring her into the Behavioral Analysis Unit. This, more than anything, intrigues Hotch.

Name: Emily Prentiss  
Species: Vampire  
Age: Unknown

It’s enough to mix hefty amounts of suspicion in with his curiosity. As ordered, he will bring this new team member into the fold, but he’ll make sure that a cross is always handy.

And that’s nothing new.


	2. Chapter 2

Derek Morgan is a werewolf. It’s one of the first things he tells people upon meeting them; “Hi, I’m Derek, and I’m a werewolf.” Of course, some don’t need to be told. They can sniff it out themselves. Such methods of introduction save awkwardness later on in the relationship. Sometimes there’s awkwardness anyway – like if a prospective date is allergic to dogs. That had put a real damper on the evening.

He’s in the break room now, stirring sugar into his coffee, and browsing the newspaper headlines. Less than a month until the presidential election. Human versus vampire. Hundred to one odds on the vamp. It’s eight a.m, and the only other person there is Reid, he too making good use of the coffee machine. Reid intrigues Morgan sometimes, though he would never mention it to the younger profiler. The last time they had tried, they were forced to requisition a new agent, and that’s how they got Spencer Reid. For now, they just let him think that he’s human. For a droid, though, the kid sure drinks a hell of a lot of coffee. Sometimes Morgan wonders if the caffeine circuits will ever overload, if maybe one day, that mechanical body will decide that enough is enough.

Morgan hopes that never happens. In spite of the young profiler’s artificial origins, he kind of likes the guy. He doesn’t judge, doesn’t hate. Is innocent without being naïve. Sometimes, Morgan wonders whether that’s just the programming, or whether Spencer Reid is modeled after a real person.

‘Did you know that coffee was first consumed in the ninth century, when it was discovered in the highlands of Ethiopia?’ Reid asks conversationally, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. He does this sometimes – sprouts facts for no reason other than that they are tangentially related to the situation at hand. ‘Of course,’ he adds. ‘That was all before the Fall of Man.’

Morgan raises an eyebrow. ‘You think the introduction of supernatural creatures into the ecosystem had some sort of impact on coffee growth?’

Reid shrugs, smiling. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Maybe.’

Morgan holds up a single finger, effectively pausing the conversation. He can hear his phone vibrating in his pocket. One benefit of having super-human senses.

‘Morgan?’ he answers, tone professional. After a few seconds, his expression changes noticeably. His eyes widen, his jaw loosens. ‘Where?...Okay, I’ll be right there, Andy. Don’t go anywhere, and don’t touch anything.’

His mouth is still open when he hangs up the phone. He’s surprised, no matter how much he wants to hide it. ‘I have to go,’ he tells Reid.

‘You have thirteen files left in your inbox,’ the younger profiler protests. Under any other circumstances, Morgan might have cracked a smile at the exactness of the statement. Right now, though, he has other things on his mind.

‘Tell Hotch I had to go. I’ll call when I know more.’

And just like that, Derek Morgan has left the building.

*          *          *

Jennifer Jareau, media liaison, runs into Hotch just moments after he leaves Strauss’ office. It takes JJ all of half a second to realize that her boss is pissed as all hell. It’s not even a vague guess – it’s a thought that is overpowering her mind.

‘Hotch, could you…’ she trails off, with a hand to her head. It’s not like she’s had a long time to deal with these new abilities. It has been less than two months since she got pelted with a burst of psychic energy. She’d never wanted to be a profiler, but it turns out being able to read minds is a million times worse. You hear _everything_. She’s been taking night classes. Has been learning to block out all the unwanted thoughts. It doesn’t really help though, when a man like Aaron Hotchner storms past, cursing his supervisor to a slow and painful death.

‘What did she want?’ JJ asks. She already knows the answer to her own question, thanks to Hotch’s rather vocal thoughts. Still, she’s not about to admit to the gross invasion of privacy.

‘A new agent is joining the team.’ Hotch doesn’t even try to keep the irritation out of his voice. ‘A vampire,’ he adds, a little unnecessarily.

JJ bites her lip. It’s bad news in more ways than one. As it stands, the team is in a pretty bad position. They’re smack bang in the middle of the country’s political capital, trying to avoid getting stabbed in the back. Their luck has lasted this long, and right now, it looks as though it isn’t going to last any longer.

‘She’s coming in this afternoon,’ he continues. ‘I was wondering…’ he hesitates, and even without psychic powers, JJ can tell he’s not quite sure how to phrase the question.

‘You want me to check her out?’ JJ asks. He grimaces in reply, and with good reason. With some vampires, giving them a remote brain scan is like offering yourself up for a meal.

‘Just a surface scan. I don’t want to know her deep, dark history yet. I want to know whether or not I have to tranq her for trying to rip my throat out.’ His hand goes immediately to his neck, where there are scars from his last encounter with a vampire. They’re not pretty little puncture wounds, either. He had almost died from blood-loss, and spent the better part of thirteen hours in surgery. Every time she closes her eyes, she can still see his blood staining her hands.

Though she’ll never admit it to Hotch, it had been one of the most terrifying nights of her life. Not because of the rogue vampires she had encountered, but because Hotch had been just inches from death. Inches from _un_death, if she had wanted to look at it that way, which she didn’t.

‘Of course,’ JJ says, without even really considering it. And her co-operation, more than anything, seems to make Hotch relax a little. ‘And did you want me to get Garcia to run background on her? There’s bound to be more than what’s in her file.’

Hotch nods. ‘Strauss isn’t too happy about this either. From what she says, I gather that this particular vampire doesn’t hold much credence with the rest of them.’ He isn’t at all comforted by this, JJ knows.

Her brow furrows. ‘Then why put her in the team at all? They won’t get any political gain out of it.’ And that’s the issue of concern.

_Why_.

The unit chief shakes his head. He doesn’t know.

‘I’ll go talk to Garcia,’ JJ says. ‘What time is she supposed to be coming in?’

Hotch checks his watch. ‘In an hour, or so.’

JJ nods. ‘I’ll be there.’


	3. Chapter 3

He stares down at the body; Michael Conrad, werewolf.

He sees bodies every day; people who were raped to death, tortured to death, burned to death in a fiery blaze. This body isn’t like any of those bodies. Death isn’t always a peaceful process, especially when murder is involved.

To Morgan, the body looks familiar. After all, he knows this man. Acquaintance is all he can claim though – they weren’t friends, simply members of the same pack. Hell, Morgan couldn’t really claim friendship to _any_ member of the pack. He runs with them the night of the full moon, and that’s about it.

He’s a lone wolf.

The only reason he’s here today is in the capacity of a law enforcement official. The pack isn’t big – barely fifty odd wolves and other lycanthropes – and Morgan is the only one with a badge to his name.

Morgan turns his gaze to Andy – Andrew Lyman – the alpha of the pack, with whom he has a professional rapport. It was an understanding, a respect for each other’s positions. In some lights, it almost could have been mistaken for friendship.

‘He wasn’t supposed to be here?’ Morgan asks.

Andy shakes his head. ‘The last time I saw him was the day after the full moon. He grabbed his clothes and went on his merry way.’

Morgan nods. He had been there, albeit a little removed from the pack.

‘How did he get in?’

‘Looked like someone blew a hole through the fence. Didn’t look as though any ‘shifter did it.’ Andy’s frowning. Whichever way you look at it, this isn’t good news for the pack.

‘Well he wasn’t here alone.’ Morgan’s staring at the body again. More specifically, he’s staring at the silver knife embedded in Michael Conrad’s chest. It didn’t get there by accident. Someone put it there, and whoever that someone was managed to lure Conrad along, break into the Sanctuary, and then make him stand still while they plunged the knife into his heart.

To Morgan, that sounds like a vampire; super-strength, super-speed, super-suggestibility. A quick sniff of the air doesn’t reveal the distinctive scent of a vamp. That doesn’t mean anything though, not really. Some of the older vamps can mask their scents, can even make him forget that he ever smelled a vampire. Skills like that shouldn’t go unchecked.

‘I’ll talk to my boss,’ he tells Andy. ‘No promises, though. We generally investigate serial cases, rather than singular incidents.’ At the same time, though, he knows that this is not going to be an isolated occurrence.

This is going to be something big.

*          *          *

The moment JJ enters Penelope Garcia’s lair, she is overwhelmed by a white blur that zips around her upper body. In spite of the day’s goings on, she smiles as the fairy lands on her shoulder.

‘Hey JJ,’ the effervescent Garcia greets her friend.

‘Hey Garcia.’

‘So is it true? Is there really a vampire joining the team?’

Unable to keep still, the hyperactive technical analyst flies back to her array of screens, followed by a slightly less enthusiastic JJ. JJ smirks.

‘Yeah, it’s true,’ she says with a sigh. ‘And on that note…’

‘You want me to check her out? See if she’s going to snap, and kill us all in our sleep?’

JJ freezes. Sometimes, her tiny compatriot lacks tact.

There’s a moment of silence as Garcia realizes what she has just said. It is mercifully broken, however, when the phone rings. She presses the speakerphone button with the tip of her toes.

‘_Heya, gorgeous._’

‘Morgan!’ Garcia squeals. ‘How is my favorite wolf buddy? Why are you calling? Can’t you just come on down to the fairy’s batcave.’

‘_I’m not in the office right now, baby girl,_’ he replies, evidently amused. ‘_I need you to look up something for me, though.’_

“Don’t tell him,” JJ mouths, and Garcia’s head bobs down, and then up again. This news is something they’re going to have to break to Morgan gently.

‘_A ‘wolf was murdered in the Sanctuary today. I need you to see if there are any similar cases, or if this is an isolated incident_.’

‘A ‘wolf murdered in the Sanctuary? That’s new. I’ll try and have something by the time you get back. You are coming back, aren’t you hot stuff?’

‘_I’ll be back soon_,’ he promises with a short laugh.

JJ and Garcia share a glance.

He’s not going to be laughing for much longer.

*          *          *

Morgan ends the call to Garcia, taking his eyes off the road momentarily to find the next contact in his phone book.

‘Hey, buddy, it’s Derek. How’re you doin’?’ The question is more a formality than anything; the only relationship he shares with the person on the other end of the phone is a professional one. It’s a recurring theme in Derek Morgan’s life. It’s almost ironic that the only people he can truly call friends are the ones he actually works with.

‘Listen, a ‘wolf was killed in the Sanctuary today. Name of Michael Joseph Conrad. C-O-N- yeah…can you keep an ear to the ground for me? Shake some branches? Andy wants this thing nipped in the bud. ‘A’ight. Thanks, man.’

He snaps the phone shut, tossing it onto the passenger’s seat without looking. His gaze is now focused on the road ahead. Skyscrapers take up the majority of this part of town, colossal structures that seem to shrink the world into a tiny, claustrophobic box. The Sanctuary is located just beyond the edge of the town. Far enough out that none visit it unless it’s the night of the full moon. For the other rest of the month, most lycanthropes are confined to this progressive society. Wolves in pressed suits.

Morgan doesn’t mind. He grew up in a city just like this. He’d like to think that the only thing that’s changed about his life is that he gets a little furry once a month, but he knows that’s not true. It’s a curse, living inside of him. He can’t do jack about it, so he may as well live with it.

_God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference._

That’s the way the world works. Only Morgan’s not so sure how he feels about God, these days. Having seen the things he’s seen, he’s not so sure he can believe that everything happens for a reason.

After all, a lot of crap has happened in his life that hasn't really amounted to anything.


	4. Chapter 4

JJ’s blocking out the thoughts of the vampire that has just entered Hotch’s office. It’s difficult, she admits. She’s doing exactly what Professor Pewter had instructed. She’s focusing on her own mind. On not letting those tendrils reach out to touch the minds of those around her. There’s something of a difference between promising that she’d check out the mind of this vampire and actually putting that promise into practice. At this point, all she can feel emitting from the room’s newest occupant is a buzz. A strangely positive buzz.

Sitting across the desk from JJ and Hotch, Emily Prentiss is decidedly vampirish. It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t embraced the whole culture surrounding vampirism. Some vamps you saw were into all of the black leather, “I’m so awesome” crap that makes JJ roll her eyes. The vampire that’s in the room with them now is wearing a simple pantsuit – navy blue – with a plain white shirt. But, all the bright colored clothes in the world can’t hide pale skin, pointed teeth and that stark aura that a vamp gives off. The hair makes it worse, JJ thinks. It’s dark, almost black. A blindingly stark contrast against an ivory complexion.

At a sideways glance from Hotch, JJ lets one of those tendrils out. Just a small one. She wants to test the waters before she jumps in with both feet. It’s a new experience – not anything like any of the minds she’s read before. It has deep roots, as though there’s more hidden below the surface than even the most proficient of psychics can detect.

Emily winks.

JJ gives a start. _Holy crap, could she sense that?_ Her heart beats a little bit faster, which only caused the vampire to grin. It’s not a malicious grin. It’s a goofy, warm thing that JJ has never really seen in a vampire before. Of course, she’s tried to keep her distance from vampires since the incident that left Hotch in hospital.

Hotch raises an eyebrow. He is uninformed as to the details of this silent interaction, JJ remembers. She gives him a slight nod, as if to give him the go-ahead. Emily Prentiss isn’t about to tear at their throats, as far as JJ can tell.

Beside her, Hotch is still bristling with discomfort. He cannot delay the start of introductions any longer though.

‘You’ve been in the Bureau twelve years?’ he asks. It’s a question that he already knows the answer to, having read through the file meticulously. JJ had watched his brow furrow at certain segments. If nothing else, it’s probably an interesting read, she thinks.

‘Yes sir.’ Hotch raises an eyebrow. Those words can tell volumes about a person, but JJ isn’t about to invade her supervisor’s privacy by trying to find out what they told him. She knows she’ll find out in the information sharing session that is bound to follow this interview.

‘Your file also says that you’ve worked in fourteen different field offices. Several of your supervisors state that you have a “problem with authority.”’

Emily rolls her eyes, though the gesture does not seem to be directed at Hotch. She gives a slight grimace, revealing understated fangs at the corner of her mouth. JJ would barely call them fangs – they were simply slightly pointed canines. Her gaze returns to Hotch, as she says, finally, ‘I’d like to think that authority has a problem with _me_.’

‘You understand that the BAU is not going to be an outlet for your personal issues?’

‘With all due respect, sir, this isn’t my personal issue. This is politics.’ She pauses, and when neither Hotch nor JJ says anything, she continues. ‘The vampires hate me because I’ve rejected them, and the non-vampires hate me because they think all bloodsuckers are arrogant jerks. And I’ll admit, I’ve got my flaws, but I’m not about to play their game. I’m here to do the job to the best of my ability, personal issues aside.’

JJ gives Hotch a slight nod. This vamp is being sincere. She may be a bloodsucker, but she’s not about to try and kill them all. The very least they can do is give her a chance.

‘If you’ll excuse us,’ Hotch says, eyes flickering towards the door. Emily nods, standing. Something tells JJ that the vamp already knows how the next few days are going to play out, especially with this team. A whole lot of mistrust is going around the Bureau these days.

She exits the room, and the door clicks shut, giving JJ and Hotch some semblance of privacy. Hotch is about to speak, but JJ quietens him. She feels something.

Oh no.

‘Morgan’s coming up here,’ she tells him, ‘_Now_.’ And if he does, he’s going to run smack bang into the vampire that’s just joined the team.

It will not be pretty.

*          *          *

Morgan smells the new vampire the moment he steps out of the elevator. There are six other vampires on this level, all of whom he mistrusts. Thankfully, his interactions with them are limited to accidental encounters in the break room, and hurried file requests. The bloodsuckers outnumber the wolves in this city ten to one. Vampires are big on politics. It fits, Morgan thinks. Vampire politicians got to be bloodsuckers in more ways than one.

He finds himself walking quickly in the direction of this new scent, this new vampire. If there’s another person he needs to avoid, he wants to know about it. The vampire/werewolf feud isn’t exactly an official thing. It isn’t a long-standing war, with each side striving to be the victors. It’s simply that when it comes down to it, the two species don’t really like each other that much. And there’s a reason, Morgan knows, that isn’t in any of the history books.

Vampires are jerks.

They’re conceited, self-important, unsympathetic jerks. This, of course, is the main reason they make such excellent politicians. They’re in it for the power, the glory. Most of the vamps treat their condition as something to be proud of, and that makes Morgan seethe more than anything else.

The scent overpowers his nostrils when he starts climbing the stairs that lead toward Hotch’s office. He sees the vamp shutting the door. She’s already sensed him. Already counted a hundred of his heartbeats. Dismissed him as nothing more than a lowly wolf.

She’s staring at him. He can see the scorn in her eyes. He closes the distance between them. She doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything. It’s a Mexican standoff, ‘wolf versus vamp. He’s waiting for her to attack, or to make a derisive comment about his heritage. Instead, she gives a tiny shrug, and steps to the side. Before he’s even had time to process what she’s done, the office door swings open, and Hotch and JJ step out.

In any other circumstance, Morgan might have wondered just what the Unit Chief and the Media Liaison were doing behind closed doors, but now there’s a more important matter at hand.

‘What’s going on, Hotch?’ he asks, not taking his eyes off of the vampire.

‘Morgan…’ starts Hotch, and the profiler can hear the slight hesitation in his supervisor’s voice. Can _smell_ the apprehension. ‘This is Emily Prentiss. She’s joining the team.’

And those are the words that Derek Morgan had feared the most. Not just that a vampire was joining the team, but…‘_Prentiss_?’ he asks, incredulous, ‘As in…’ He gives her a sideways glance. ‘As in those fuckers that almost _killed _you?’

For a moment Hotch looks as though he’s about to agree with Morgan, but instead, he says, ‘I’d prefer that we talk about this in private,’ and gestures towards his open office door. ‘JJ, if you’d show Agent Prentiss around, introduce her to the rest of the team?’

And if either JJ or the vamp takes exception to this order, Morgan doesn’t know, because he has already slammed the office door shut.


	5. Chapter 5

Emily’s feeling a little apprehensive as she follows Agent Jareau – JJ – down into the bullpen. She had known that it was going to be bad. It has always been bad. Upon joining the Wolfgrove Field Office, she had gotten into a scuffle with a weretiger who took exception to her presence. Hadn’t lasted long there. But her mother hadn’t tried to kill her last boss. Of course, her mother’s tried – and succeeded – in killing a lot of people, including a few attempts on _Emily’s_ life, but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable.

‘They’ll come around,’ says JJ matter-of-factly, and for a moment Emily is a little bit surprised. She had thought the media liaison would have thought better about any further attempts at reading her mind. Then, she remembers – this woman works with a team of profilers. She’s bound to have picked up a few things.

Shaking her head slightly, Emily let her senses wander to the clump of desks that JJ was leading her to. There are two occupants at present – an older man, who has a slightly grizzled look about him, and a kid that looks like he’s fresh out of high school. There’s a moment while her mind registers something that’s slightly off.

The younger guy doesn’t have a heartbeat.

Holy shit.

He’s a droid. An incredibly sophisticated droid. She had not realized that robotics had come so far.

‘Don’t say anything,’ JJ whispers, so softly that no normal human could have heard it. ‘He doesn’t know.’

Jerking herself back into reality, Emily takes a closer look at the two men. The younger one – the droid – is tall and gangly, and he’s wearing a purple vest. She can see the silver chain of a pocket watch glinting under the fluorescent lights. The older one is a little stockier, and wearing a long, black Nehru jacket, with a seven-pointed white star embroidered upon the collar. Order of the Mystic.

‘This is Spencer Reid, our resident encyclopedia,’ JJ gestures to the younger of the two, ‘And David Rossi, Wizard,’ she gestures to the older one. ‘Guys, this is Emily Prentiss, our newest agent.’

‘I prefer the term “Practitioner of Magic,”’ Rossi says, shaking Emily’s hand. She’s surprised by his inherent lack of hesitation. This isn’t a guy that gets hung up on species.

‘It’s uh…nice to meet you,’ Reid says nervously, giving a tiny wave. He’s not so big on human contact, apparently. And this makes Emily even more curious as to his origins – normally droids are as out-of-the-box as they come. Stereotypical personalities. This one seems a little more…human. Life-like.

‘We’ll usually brief new cases at ten a.m,’ continues JJ. ‘But this week is “catch up on the overflowing inboxes” week, so unless there’s an emergency, it’s going to be mostly paperwork.’

‘It means you’ll probably get a better start than our last new agent,’ Rossi adds with a grimace. Reid bows his head slightly, and Emily finds herself immediately intrigued.

‘What happened?’

‘There were a group of rogue witches kidnapping children to use as human sacrifices,’ JJ reveals. ‘Our agent – Elle – got in the way of a spell, and…’ She trails off.

There’s an uncomfortable silence, and Emily feels slightly guilty for bringing up the subject. She knows that it’s always hard to lose an agent – even one you haven’t known very long. It seems to drive home the fact that this isn’t a normal job. There are a lot of names etched on the memorial wall in the courtyard of the FBI headquarters. It and the surrounding gardens are well maintained. Some kind of silent epitaph. Emily can recall several occasions on which her name almost ended up etched on that wall. _Un_dead doesn’t quite count. That said, there are a fair number of agents whose names had been removed from the wall due to their resurrection at the hands of a Necromancer.

The world can be a pretty complicated place.

As if there hadn’t been that awkwardness, JJ continues with her tour. ‘That one will be your desk,’ she says, pointing to Emily’s left. It’s stark, empty. A position waiting to be filled. Emily wonders how long the last agent had been there before all of her possessions had been swept unceremoniously into a garbage bag. A week? A couple of days? Hours? This is the BAU, not some after school kids’ club, and Emily’s not entirely sure that she belongs. It’s all a matter of trying to pretend that she does.

With a quick goodbye to Reid and Rossi, they continue on their way, JJ pointing out areas of interest, like the supply closet full of stakes and silver bullets, or the medical office, for identifying all kinds of nasty bites and scratches.

‘And this is Garcia’s lair,’ JJ opens a door right at the end of the hallway.

Emily frowns, trying to ascertain the nature of the room before stepping right into it. The description sounds almost ominous, as though there’s some great beast they keep locked away, and send in those they don’t like, unaware. It’s a surprise then, when she’s met with a fluttering of wings, and a rapidly beating heart. A fairy. She’s met fairies before; most of them are incredibly affable, until you mess with them. A powerful force can be unleashed from such a small package.

This fairy isn’t pissed. She’s one shining ball of happy.

So distracted by the tiny white creature that’s sussing her out, it’s a few moments before she notices the bank of computer screens that dominate the room. The last time she had seen this much electrical equipment was when she was tracking down some over-eager scientist trying to reanimate corpses.

‘Emily Prentiss, meet Penelope Garcia, “tech kitten.”’

Emily holds out a finger for the fairy to shake, which is accepted with gusto.

‘She’s a little bit hyperactive,’ says JJ following Garcia into the room, not bothering to lower her voice this time. Adding, ‘Sugar,’ as if it explains everything.

And, Emily smirks, noting the tiny bag of gummi bears in one corner of the desk; it probably _does_ explain a lot of things.

‘I emailed you those files you asked for,’ Garcia tells JJ, and JJ nods. There’s definitely something going on there, Emily knows. She also knows that it’s not her business to find out. ‘Also, I found some stuff on what Morgan was looking for. Really weird stuff.’

JJ’s interest piques noticeably. Turning to Emily, she explains. ‘A ‘wolf was killed in the Sanctuary this morning.’ Her brow creases, as she adds, ‘That’s probably why Morgan is in such a bad mood. He’s not usually so…aggressive.’

‘I _was_ wondering,’ says Emily, giving a half smile. ‘I mean, he was acting as though I slaughtered his entire family, or something.’

Garcia winces, and Emily knows immediately that it had definitely not been the right thing to say.

‘His father was killed by a vampire,’ provides JJ, evidently taking pity on Emily’s horror. ‘A lowlife, crackhead vampire,’ she elaborates. ‘But still…’

_Tread softly_, is the unspoken message. Emily doesn’t need to be told twice. She’s not about to screw up her chances in the BAU thanks to another vendetta. There have been enough of those, not all of them her fault.

‘Will we be taking the case?’ Emily asks, biting her lip. It would be just her luck for her first case to be involving werewolves. Although, she reasons, at least it’s not vampires. That would be a hundred times worse.

 ‘That depends on what Garcia’s found,’ explains JJ. ‘Technically speaking, we usually only take serial cases, regardless of whether or not they are supernatural concerns. It’s difficult to build a profile with just one death.’

‘Well then, I have good news, and bad news,’ announces Garcia. ‘The good news is, I have more bodies. The bad news is, I have more bodies. Thirteen lycanthropes killed over the past year across the country, silver knife, no defensive wounds, not including the one that was killed this morning. Thanks to “pack dynamics,” most alphas wanted to keep their investigations in house, which is the reason why no-one ever made the connection. They were all treating it as an isolated attack against their own pack.’

‘And yet none of the cases were ever solved,’ concludes JJ. Garcia gives a grimace that would be imperceptible to anyone not less than two feet away or with superhuman vision.

‘That’s shifters for you,’ shrugs Garcia. ‘Very hung up on the camaraderie of their own pack, but when it comes to liaising with other packs…A bit like the vamps. They’ll respect each other’s territory, but they won’t be inviting each other to their parties. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule in both species.’

She’s talking about Morgan, Emily thinks; he smells like a wolf, but he doesn’t smell like a pack. Why, then, does it make him so upset to find a fellow wolf dead?

‘He’s got trouble trusting a lot of people, doesn’t he?’ she asks. ‘It’s not just me.’

She admits, she’s intrigued by Derek Morgan. And she hopes like hell she’ll get the chance to figure him out.


	6. Chapter 6

‘I don’t like this, Hotch,’ is the first thing that Morgan says to his Unit Chief, as if it hadn’t been perfectly obvious from the altercation in the hallway. ‘There is no way in hell we can trust her. Not after what happened.’

‘I have my suspicions too,’ admits Hotch. ‘But all evidence suggests that Agent Prentiss keeps little to no contact with other vampires, and from what JJ  could sense, she isn’t about to slaughter us all mercilessly.’

Morgan responds with a look of surprise, but does not say anything. Hotch wonders if the ‘wolf trusts JJ’s abilities enough to accept that conclusion.

‘That _doesn’t_ mean that I’m going to drop all barriers and trust her completely. I’m going to give her a chance to prove herself, because from the looks of it, no-one else has.’

Hotch knows what it’s like to be ostracized because of species. These days, there are a lot of people that consider pure humans as nothing more than glorified pets. He worked hard to get where he is, and he’d be a hypocrite if he denied someone else the same opportunity, vampire or no. Hell, he even gave Morgan the same opportunity, in spite of the ‘wolf’s less than flawless background.

Morgan’s silent, and Hotch gets the idea that Emily Prentiss isn’t the only thing he’s thinking about. He had been mysteriously absent from the bullpen for a good part of the morning, something that’s probably related to his bad mood.

‘What else is going on?’ Hotch asks, ‘And don’t tell me it’s nothing.’

‘A ‘wolf was murdered in the pla- the Sanctuary today. Andy asked me to take a look into it. Garcia’s checking out the files for me. If it’s a serial…’

‘We don’t have any other pertinent cases,’ says Hotch. ‘At the very least, we can check it out.’ There’s a moment of silence, and, noting the look on Morgan’s face, the Unit Chief adds, ‘_All _of us.’

‘It could be a vampire killing these ‘wolves, Hotch.’ He’s not ready to let go of the matter so easily.

‘And ‘wolves can be serial killers too, Derek.’ He’s calling the younger man Derek. Letting him know how serious this is. ‘If anything, having a vamp on the team will give us better insight – for this case _and _others. But don’t mistake acceptance for me letting down my guard.’

There’s silence between them as Hotch adds something he’s not quite sure he really wants to say. ‘If she makes a wrong move, we’ll be ready.’

*          *          *

When Morgan makes his way back down to the bullpen, JJ and the vamp – _Emily ­_– have already returned, JJ presently showing their newest agent the small kitchenette at the far side of the unit. Emily is smiling, which only serves to pique his curiosity. She’s not your traditional vampire; that he knows. Though he’s tried to avoid them since the death of his father, he knows that there are a few out there who shun vampire culture almost entirely. He’s not quite sure he’s ready to believe that she is one of them.

‘What do you think?’ he asks Reid, who is sitting at his desk, looking in the same direction as Morgan.

Reid gives a slight shrug. ‘She seems nice.’

‘You don’t think she’s rogue?’

‘Statistically speaking, if all the vampires in this city were rogue, there is no plausible way for the human population to support their level of bloodlust. That’s the main reason why blood consumption is closely monitored by the Department of Health and Human Services.’

In spite of himself, Morgan grins. ‘I know the laws, kid. A simple “no” would have done it.’ 250mL per day, unless otherwise allowed by the Department. All blood must be processed by the local DoHHS Nutrition Center, or “bloodbank”, as they are colloquially known.

‘What do you think?’ asks Reid, and for a moment, Morgan almost forgets that he’s talking to a machine.

‘I don’t know,’ says Morgan. ‘The timing is a little suspicious, you’ve got to admit. And the rest of her family…Every part of me is saying to run, regardless of what’s in her file, or what JJ can read off of her. There’s something dark there, Reid.’

‘But you’re not running.’

‘No,’ says Morgan, and for a split second, his eyes lock with hers across the floor. They’re dark. Deep. For a moment he almost feels like letting all his suspicions fall away, and welcoming her into the fold. Not for long, though. Just that split second.

Then Emily breaks the connection, and the moment is lost.

It’s enough to make him wonder, though.

_What is she _really _hiding?_


	7. Chapter 7

It’s ten minutes before the entire team congregate in the conference room, JJ carrying the thick pile of files that is responsible for this morning’s briefing. Morgan’s mood had momentarily worsened, upon having learned of the thirteen related cases. It creates an air of tension that Emily is uncomfortably aware of.

She’s trying to keep things running smoothly with the werewolf. She’s smiling, trying to be down-to-earth about the whole situation. But part of her knows that the timing really _sucks_. Of course, her mother just _had _to go and ravage the team she was going to join. Couldn’t have attacked _any_ other team in the entire FBI.

No time to think about that now. It’s time to think about the fourteen dead werewolves. Fourteen. It doesn’t seem that big of a number, but knowing that fourteen people have left behind families, left behind loved ones, left behind legacies. That seems a lot.

In other departments, Emily had never had to deal with anything like this. Any serial case had been either handled by the local PD, or passed on to the BAU. Of course, she’s dealt with death from a different perspective far too often.

‘Fourteen ‘wolves stabbed in the chest with a silver knife over the last year,’ JJ starts, in spite of the fact that the majority of the room’s occupants already know the pertinent details of the case. ‘The most recent one was killed last night, body found in the William Kenbridge Lycanthrope Sanctuary this morning by Andrew Lyman, the local pack alpha.’

‘What was he doing there?’ Emily wonders aloud, and she’s sure that if anyone else had voiced the question, they wouldn’t have been on the receiving end of slightly scathing look from Morgan. She almost gives her own less than polite gesture in reply, but then thinks better of it. ‘It’s just…I thought that sanctuaries were only supposed to be used on the night of the full moon. That’s three days away.’

‘In the days leading up to the full moon, the Sanctuary is inspected for safety reasons,’ says Morgan, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. And it is pretty obvious, being standard procedure across the country and all. Emily curses herself for being such a dolt. It’s an all too frequent occurrence. ‘Andy doesn’t have anything to do with this.’

‘How close are the pack?’

Morgan narrows his eyes. ‘A wolf couldn’t have killed him. The knife was _silver_.’

She bites her lip. ‘I wasn’t suggesting that one of them did. But if there’s someone in the pack that knows him well, they might be able to shed some light on _why_ he was in the Sanctuary.’

‘They’re not that close,’ he answers tersely, and Emily is immediately intrigued by his phrasing. _They’re _not that close. Not _we’re_. Almost as though he doesn’t even consider himself one of them. That fits with what Garcia had said earlier. He’s one of them, but he’s not _one _of them. ‘A few of them have formed friendships, but nothing on a pack-wide scale.’

‘And did Conrad have any shifter friends?’ asks Rossi, and Emily’s almost relieved that someone else has taken over the line of questioning. It lets her know that at the very least, she’s on the right track.

‘A couple,’ Morgan shrugs, his voice sounding a little less scathing. ‘I don’t – didn’t – really know him that well.’

Hotchner nods. ‘We’ll need to work out why he was there. He might have been there to meet the unsub.’

‘It’s also possible that he was lured there _by_ the unsub,’ adds Emily, meeting Morgan’s eyes as she speaks. She knows he had wanted to bring up the same possibility, and she can hear his heart beating a little bit faster, but she doesn’t think he’s angry. Not about that, at least. ‘If they put him into a trance, he would have been pretty acquiescent.’

She’s holding her breath slightly until Hotchner speaks up. ‘You’re right,’ he says, but he’s looking at Morgan for a reason that Emily’s pretty sure she could work out. ‘We’ll go to the Sanctuary first – _all_ of us – and then split up. JJ, Morgan and I will talk to Conrad’s acquaintances; Rossi, Reid and Prentiss can focus on the supernatural angle.’

It’s a good thing that everyone seems accepting of this arrangement, Emily thinks, because Aaron Hotchner certainly hasn’t left room for argument.

*          *          *

The parking lot is underground. There are a few spaces scattered outside, but considering the fact that at least a quarter of the building’s employees are vampires means that plenty of sunshine isn’t exactly high on the list of needs.

David Rossi is curious though, as to how this particular vampire is going to deal with the whole sunlight issue. No-one’s brought up the topic yet. He figures that she’d probably have said something by now if it is going to be an issue. In any case, he brings it up casually.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she says, as if that’s all there is to it. There are some vitamin supplements that let a vampire walk about during the day. A cocktail of medications that deter a lot of them from even trying. They’d rather stay indoors than deal with the side effects. Even then, you don’t usually see them going out without some form of protection from the sun – a hat, a full bodysuit, sometimes. Sunscreen. Emily Prentiss has little more than a pair of dark sunglasses.

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ she says, her expression twisting into a smile. ‘If I burn up into a pile of ash, then you can read a poem at my funeral.’ There’s a pause. ‘Nothing too dark, though. Something light. Maybe with trees in it.’

‘Frost?’

‘Mmm. Maybe Dickinson.’

‘She was a vampire,’ says Reid matter-of-factly from the back seat. He’s staring out the tinted glass windows, not paying attention to the conversation, and yet hearing every word of it. ‘Though I’m curious as to why you’d consider her poems a source of levity; a good deal of them were about death.’

‘And immortality,’ adds Rossi, and from the way Emily flinches slightly at that word, he figures that there’s some information he’s not privy to. He wonders just how old this person sitting beside him is, that she can walk in the sun without ill effects, and react that way to mentions of immortality. Two hundred, at least, he thinks. Probably older.

And he’s banking on the fact that she spent a lot of that time alone.

 


	8. Chapter 8

The moment Emily steps out of the SUV, she feels the warmth of the sun beating down upon her skin. For a couple of minutes, it feels nice. Makes her feel alive. Then the bile starts to rise in her throat. She’s nowhere near strong enough to walk in around without effect.  After this stint, she’ll probably have to excuse herself to the nearest bathroom to empty her stomach contents. Then, she’ll probably need to replenish her strength. All of that can wait, though. She has a job to do.

She ignores the sickening feeling in her stomach. Ignores the way her hands are shivering. She slips them into her pockets, avoiding the sideways glance from Rossi. She figures she probably has an hour, max. More if she sticks to the shaded areas.

That’s not the only thing that’s making her uncomfortable. She’s hoping like hell that her hesitations are interpreted as unwillingness to be wandering around the Sanctuary. ‘Wolves hate her kind on the best of days, and today is definitely not the best of days.

She ignores the glare given to her by the man Morgan introduces as the pack alpha. His heart is beating pretty fast, and she’s pretty sure that her presence is at least partially responsible. To his credit, though, he doesn’t say anything. On top of being a strong leader, alphas are usually fairly tactful. While there are official liaisons between the pack and the outside world, often the situation calls for the alpha’s intervention.

There’s a patch of compacted grass where the body lay, less than two hours ago. It’s already been picked up by the coroner, awaiting post-mortem examination. If there’s anything suspicious that impacts upon the investigation, they’ll find out soon enough.

‘Do you feel that?’ Rossi asks, his gaze reaching each member of the team. They all give a swift shake of the head. ‘There’s magic in the air,’ he reveals. ‘Not in abundance, but it’s there.’

There’s a slight pause as they all stop what they’re doing, and try and sense what Rossi is talking about. Magic is one of those things that everyone has in varying amounts. It’s the training that turns someone with potential into a powerful sorcerer. Even those with very little magic in their blood can become a proficient sorcerer in their own right. More often than not, it’s how they use the magic that counts.

Emily’s met a few sorcerers in her life; witches and wizards of all disciplines. Some of them can sense the _type_ of magic that had been performed, weeks after the fact. Rossi has his eyes closed now, as if trying to will himself into the past – to determine what happened the previous night.

‘Anything?’ asks Hotch, and Rossi shakes his head.

‘Someone’s covered their tracks well. There’ll probably be a sorcerer involved in some capacity, but what actually happened, I don’t know.’ He gives a slight shrug. There’s a procedure to situations like this. If the sorcerer at hand can’t detect the source of the magic, then a specialist is brought in after the fact. A supernatural crime scene technician. Someone whose sole function is to analyze the scene and determine what spells had been used, and in some cases, who had used them.

That, though, could take days, by which time their killer might have already chosen their next victim.

‘Did you and Prentiss want to take a look around?’ asks Hotch, and for a moment, the alpha looks like he wants to argue with that order, but he decides against it. Instead, Emily finds herself being whisked away. It’s probably a good move. With her out of the way, the alpha will probably a lot more forthcoming.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ Rossi says, the moment they’re out of earshot. Considering ‘wolf hearing, they’re a fair way away from the team.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ says Emily evenly, which isn’t exactly the truth. She can guess. She’d almost forgotten about the nausea once they’d started talking about the case, but now Rossi’s brought it up, she’s starting to notice that feeling in the pit of her stomach.

‘Cut the crap,’ he says, and he isn’t treading on eggshells, which increases the respect she has for him by a considerable margin.  ‘You’re clearly uncomfortable in the sun, and you aren’t helping matters by trying to overcompensate. We’ve all got out weaknesses. No-one will think any less of you if you stay indoors during the daylight hours. God know none of us really sleep anyway.’

Her response is to drop to her knees and empty her stomach contents at the base of the nearest tree. An event which only serves to prove his point. It hadn’t been an intentional decision – just very bad timing.

‘This is nothing,’ she manages to cough out, vomit purged from her system. ‘I’m lucky I’m not burning up.’

‘Something tells me that death by stubbornness would be much slower, and much more painful.’

Sighing, she relents. ‘I’ll speak with Agent Hotchner later. I’m sure we can come to an agreement. That is, of course, if he’s not afraid that I’m going to tear his throat out.’ The last part sounded a little _too_ spiteful, even for her standards.

Rossi doesn’t say anything, simply raising an eyebrow. ‘I can work in the shade well enough,’ Emily shrugs, indicating the more heavily wooded area that is just ahead of them. It is where they were headed anyway, and she feels slightly ashamed at not being able to hold it in just a few seconds longer.

‘Tell me about Morgan,’ she says abruptly, the moment the sun disappears behind the canopy. It’s an incredibly dorky thing to say, especially when they’re supposed to be searching for evidence, but if Rossi thinks that the question is inappropriate, it doesn’t show.

‘He’s a good person,’ Rossi says, simultaneously casting his senses, searching for anything out of the ordinary. ‘But he’s been through a lot. He sees trust as something that needs to be earned. Once you’ve earned it, though…He’ll go through hell to protect you.’

Emily gives a twisted smile. Considering their rocky start, she wouldn’t be surprised if earning Derek Morgan’s trust took her another hundred years.


	9. Chapter 9

Hotch watches as Rossi and Prentiss make their way down the slope towards the treeline. He knows for a fact that two others are looking in the same direction. One of them is Andrew Lyman. The other is Derek Morgan. It makes sense that they be so uncomfortable at having a vampire encroach upon their territory. Lord knows that Hotch feels the same way.

It’s a problem that can’t be helped. Differences aside, some skills are unique to the vampire. Imitations just don’t cut it anymore.

‘Forgive me,’ says Lyman, turning his attention back towards the remaining FBI agents. ‘It’s not often that vamps come here. Most of the clans house themselves on the other side of town.’

Hotch grimaces. ‘I know,’ he says. A memory flashes through his mind. There’s blood. So much blood. _His_ blood. JJ gives him a sideways look. He knows that she can sense the doubt that has been so prevalent in his thoughts of late. That’s not to mention the anger, the frustration.

‘He got in through a hole in the fence. Probably from either a blast of magic or someone with godlike strength. That thing is built to withstand a pack of ‘wolves in their shifted form. It’s not as easy as getting a bodybuilder to hit it with a sledgehammer.’

When he’s not the alpha of the pack, Andrew Lyman is a federal prosecutor for the Department of Justice. He knows how this works, even if he isn’t on the “crime prevention” end of the spectrum.

‘I have to go now. Dhampir murdered and exsanguinated one of his neighbors. We’re looking to defang.’ Lyman then leaves the team with his second-in-command, a surly looking man by the name of Alan, who looks as though he could snap a tree in half with his fingers. Something tells Hotch that this man hadn’t been picked for his brains.

JJ kneels beside him, fingers touching the grass. She’s checking for residual psychic energy. Anything that happens leaves an imprint. Magic, but a different type of magic.

‘Something bad happened here,’ is all she says. There isn’t much detail to these residual energy checks. Nothing concrete enough to determine the identity of the killer. It’s usually used in determining the motives of the death, rather than the specific circumstances. Hotch can see Alan shifting in disdain; after all, it’s fairly obvious that something bad happened. JJ can apparently sense that too, because she rephrases almost immediately. ‘I can feel this…darkness. As though whoever did this was…’ She hesitates. ‘Evil.’ With all the things in the world - all the deadly, dangerous and horrific things – evil is not a word that’s thrown around lightly. Admittedly, though, it’s thrown around in their profession much more than anywhere else.

It’s not much to go on, but it’s something. It adds to the profile. Probably not enough to assuage the distrust of the pack members, but then, most of them don’t know how profiling works. Most of them just want to find out who killed their pack member, and tear him (or her) to pieces.

‘What do you think?’ asks Morgan, eyes fixated on the spot where the body once was.

‘There’s not much to go on,’ says Hotch truthfully. All of the things that are coming to light aren’t exactly surprising. There’s nothing out of the ordinary, nothing case-breaking. And that’s the same with any case. If someone could just waltz up, and determine immediately who the killer is, they’d be out of a job. Even the most proficient of psychics aren’t that good. ‘But victimology will probably be able to help with that.’

‘Providing this isn’t a hate crime, or just random killings,’ points out JJ, accepting Hotch’s hand as he helps her up.

‘It probably isn’t,’ supplies Reid. ‘There isn’t enough publicity. Someone looking to inject fear into the werewolf population would most certainly make sure that the deaths were linked. Beyond the same M.O, this killer isn’t going to any particular lengths to be recognized.’

Hotch nods. It all begs the question: is there something else going on? Is their unsub killing for their own disturbed reasons, or is there something else? Something more sinister. It’s not unheard of. People who think that just because they can spin a spell or two, they’re in a prime position to take over the world. Those are the people who ensure that working for the BAU is so much more than just a job. It’s a life. A concept that’s made even more macabre when the mortality rate is taken into consideration.

‘Can you take us to the point of entry?’ Hotch asks the second-in-command, who replies with an incomprehensible grunt.

Never before had he appreciated what ‘wolves did on a full moon night as much as he does right now. The Sanctuary is huge. Acres and acres of enclosed wilderness; enough to let the pack roam without feeling claustrophobic, and without incurring any non-shifter casualties. It takes them almost twenty minutes to reach the western fence line, and even then, there’s still a fair way to go before the northern boundaries, where the fence is the only thing separating the Sanctuary from the _real_ wilderness.

Rossi and Prentiss meet them there a few minutes later, Prentiss looking a little worse for wear. The sun is having a detrimental effect on her, and Hotch makes a mental note to bring it up later.

‘Anything?’ he asks.

Rossi shakes his head. ‘No sign of tracks, physical or otherwise.’

Prentiss brushes a hand against the hole, conveniently positioned under the shade of a large oak. Aside from the debris that litters the ground, there are no effects on the surrounding area.

‘Could you do it?’ Hotch asks abruptly, and Prentiss jerks her head up.

‘What?’ she says, almost dumbfounded.

‘Could you punch a hole in a wall like that?’

She hesitates, as if she’s not sure she really wants to answer the question. ‘Hypothetically speaking,’ adds Hotch, and that seems to ease her discomfort some slight amount.

‘Maybe. At night. If I were at full strength. Be sore for hours afterwards though.’ She shrugs, as if trying to make it seem a little less than it really is. But Hotch knows what it takes to bring a vampire up to full strength. He’s been a part of that ritual. He resists the urge to rub his scarring. And if the rumors from previous Unit Chiefs are correct, then this particular vampire will never be up to full strength. It’s animal or nothing, in spite of the multitude of human donors just clamoring for a chance at one night with a vampire.

‘We can’t jump to conclusions,’ Rossi says, as if he might have thought that Hotch was insinuating something. He doesn’t think that though. Rossi knows Hotch far too well to make that kind of mistake. What he _is_ doing is assuring Prentiss that they aren’t jumping to conclusions. She gives another shrug.

‘God knows a lot of them are self-important enough to do it just for kicks,’ is all she says.

Hotch agrees vehemently, but it isn’t the objective path to take.

That doesn’t mean that they’ll rule it out entirely.


	10. Chapter 10

Morgan slides into the passenger’s seat of the SUV, his mind brimming with questions; both with regard to Conrad’s death, and the behavior of their newest agent. One of those topics, though, will have to wait for another time. As curious as he is, as suspicious as he is, he doesn’t want it to interfere with the case at hand. That’s probably the secondary reason that Hotch had assigned the vampire to tag along with Rossi and Reid; arguably the least judgmental members of the team. More accepting than himself and the Unit Chief, at least. He’s not ashamed to admit that. That’s about trust, though. Not intolerance. The main reason is for pragmaticism, rather than anyone’s personal feelings. They have the most supernatural experience. The most likely to determine whatever manner of creature had lured Conrad to his death in the first place.

Their first stop is an apartment building a few miles south of the Sanctuary. The apartment building where Michael Joseph Conrad once lived with his wife, and eight month old daughter. Morgan’s never met Conrad’s family. Never met the family of any member of the pack. It’s not an experience he thinks he’ll relish. Hopefully, though, Hotch and JJ will do most of the talking.

She’s a tall woman – maybe 5’10”. Chestnut brown hair, green eyes. Kind of pretty, Morgan thinks. Her eyes are stained with tears.

‘Sarah Conrad?’ Hotch asks. ‘We’re with the FBI. My name is Agent Hotchner; this is Agent Jareau, and Agent Morgan.’ She gives Morgan a long glance, as if she already knows what he is. It wouldn’t surprise him. If you spend enough time around ‘wolves, you learn to pick up the smell.

She steps back to let them in, saying nothing. It’s a rather small apartment, the kitchen, dining and living area merged into one overcrowded room.

‘Felicity’s asleep,’ she says, indicating the closed door that’s just a few feet away from them. ‘If you could talk softly…’ She trails off, her own voice barely heard in the otherwise silent apartment. It’s understandable, considering her husband has just died.

Morgan’s squashed into the two-seater couch with JJ and Hotch when Sarah returns with a tray of coffee and muffins. The muffins are freshly made, and Morgan briefly wonders if she has spent the entire morning cooking. An interesting reaction to grief.

They’re good muffins though, he reasons, taking in the first mouthful of apple and cinnamon.

‘Can you think of anyone that might have wanted to kill your husband?’ Hotch starts. It’s the standard question for all interviewees. If they can establish someone with a motive, then they’re one step closer to building their profile.

Sarah nods sadly. ‘He had enemies before…before he turned, but ever since he dropped out of the political game…I don’t know if it’s relevant now, though…’

Morgan had glanced over Conrad’s file in the hours since he learned of the ‘wolf’s death. Low level politician, bitten by a rogue wolf just months ago, after visiting family in the town of Romulus. As the name suggests, there are a lot of wolves in the area, both rogue and otherwise. Conrad had quit his job as soon as he had received the test results. If a human has trouble getting into politics, then a ‘wolf’s troubles are a thousand times worse. It’s either quit, or get slaughtered on the playing field.

‘No-one’s made any threats?’

‘No. None. We’ve been trying to save up enough to move to a more wolf-friendly city. Things have been…tough.’

Morgan silently agrees. At the time of his own turning, he had lived in a city that was rife with vampire/werewolf street wars. Not a very safe place to be, even for a ‘wolf with no interest in the glorified ultra-violence that seems to define some members of the species.

‘Did he say where he was going last night? Or who he was going with?’

Sarah wipes a stray tear from her eye. The coffee mug is still grasped in her hand, undrunk. ‘He was supposed to be at work. He’d been taking shifts at a local diner. Washing dishes, mopping floors. Anything it takes.’

Her gaze wanders to the closed door. ‘We can’t afford child-care anymore. I can’t work, because I’m too busy looking after Felicity. Maybe, if we’d just…gotten out of here…’ She chokes back a sob, tears falling a little more freely. JJ tries in vain to comfort her.

The media liaison has been strangely quiet, most probably overwhelmed by the level of emotion that Sarah Conrad is displaying. If it’s obvious to him, then it’s a hundred times more obvious to a psychic.

It’s a few moments before Sarah calms down, and Morgan can see the slightly pained look on Hotch’s face as he asks the next question. ‘Had Michael been acting strangely at all? Anything that might indicate possession, or a trance of some sort?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. He was just so…exhausted. The full moon drained him every month. We barely had any time together.’ She sobs again, and to Morgan it looks as though she’s about to have a nervous breakdown.

JJ gives Hotch a sideways glance. Anything  more they ask is just going to upset Sarah Conrad. Morgan stands. Though he’s concerned for the woman’s wellbeing, at the same time, he’s eager to leave. It’s disconcerting, being in the home of a pack member, albeit a deceased pack member.

‘Is there anyone we can call?’ JJ asks softly. ‘Anyone who can stay with you?’

Morgan’s already standing by the door, but his hearing picks up Sarah’s declaration that she can talk to her neighbor, a vampire that works the graveyard shift. The thought piques Morgan’s curiosity; a vampire and a werewolf getting along. It’s not so impossible a concept. There is animosity, but using the phrase mortal enemies is taking it a bit too far. It’s not a centuries-long battle. If it were, the world would probably be a much darker place.

At the same time, he’s not so sure he’s willing to let go of his own doubts.


	11. Chapter 11

Emily raises an eyebrow when Rossi tosses her the blood bag from the glove compartment.

‘You look like you need it,’ is all he says.

There’s a strangled silence. Rossi’s waiting for a reaction, and Reid hasn’t said anything yet. She flips the bag over, staring at the label. The label reads RE-279, which tells her almost immediately that he must have requisitioned it from Human Resources. It’s emergency stock, usually reserved for situations in which an agent has lost so much energy that not drinking would be highly detrimental. She’s not sure what this threshold is, but she knows she hasn’t quite reached it.

‘I’m not going to drink this,’ she tells him bluntly. She’s being cautious, but she knows that it usually comes off as blatant stubbornness. That’s not to say that there isn’t stubbornness involved. She’s not so naïve as to think that she’s entirely compliant when it comes to most situations. Especially when it concerns something like this.

‘You’ll feel like crap for the rest of the day if you don’t,’ he reasons, adding, as if in afterthought, ‘It’ll affect your capacity to do the job.’

Damn him.

She grits her teeth. Of course he has to bring up the job. It’s all very well that she doesn’t want to drink it, but Rossi is entirely in the right when he says it will affect her ability to function. He’s been doing this for a long, long time. Long enough that he can pinpoint her motivations in a heartbeat. That’s what the job is all about.

She hesitates, feeling the weight of the thing in her hand. She wants – _needs ­_– to stay in control. And that too, apparently, is something that Rossi can sense.

‘We’d stop you before anything could happen,’ he says, and this time he’s the one speaking bluntly, as if there’s no room for argument. She knows the drill. Any agent that loses control is taken out as quickly as possible. It happens far more frequently than the Bureau would like to admit. High-stress occupations and oft insatiable bloodlust do not mix well. It’s not just the vampires either; there are dozens of stories of sorcerers with too much power, werewolves tearing their friends to pieces. There are contingency plans in place. It doesn’t comfort her. She knows her limits. They don’t.

‘We’ve all got our issues,’ he continues, bringing up the conversation topic from before. ‘We try to work around them. Morgan takes three days off around the full moon, we all try not to think too much while we’re around JJ and no-one brings up deep-sea fishing when Hotch is in a bad mood.’ She’s fairly certain that the last one is mostly his attempt at lightening the mood. It’s not working. They might have their issues, but she’s the only one that can snap and kill them at any moment.

‘You’d have to kill me,’ she whispers, and, as suspected, he doesn’t flinch.

‘If it comes to that.’

As if that is the permission she’s been waiting for, she rolls her eyes at him, and rips off the tab. The smell permeates the enclosed vehicle. It’s rat’s blood, which she could have told them without even smelling it. Not as smooth as goat, and it’s nowhere near as good as human, but that’s not a path she wants to start walking down. It doesn’t matter that all the blood comes from donors. The natural association is inevitable. It’s something that she’ll go to great lengths to avoid.

She admits, it tastes good, but that’s probably due to the fact that she’s as weak as a kitten. At this point, even bird’s blood would have tasted like a freshly slain virgin. She’d had her daily dose already today, mixed in with her morning coffee. A decent barista can make a heavenly café vita even out of rat’s blood.

It’s a formulaic, if unceremonious process. The heartbeat speeds up, the pupils dilate, and the fangs lengthen just a touch. Some vamps can make it look like the scariest thing in the world. And sometimes, it can be. And not just for the person on the wrong side of the fangs. For someone who takes pride in their self-control, a loss of it can be more terrifying than any crucifix.

Those are just the physiological responses. The psychological responses can be much more varied between vamps. Usually, it involves hyper-alertness for a couple of hours after consumption; alertness that can often be mistaken for giddiness. It’s a very disconcerting thing to be chased by a vampire who is laughing maniacally, whilst at the same time intent on cold-blooded murder. As if the murder isn’t bad enough.

It’s a few seconds before she realizes that Rossi is saying something. She shakes herself back to reality and turns towards him, aware that she’s definitely not the picture of composure right now.

‘Are you alright?’ he asks, and she can almost sense that he’s ready to pull out a spell and knock her out if she starts freaking. She respects him for that.

‘I’m fine,’ she says, wiping away a few droplets of blood that still stain her lips. ‘It can be a little …’ She makes a hand gesture, trying, and miserably failing to illustrate what she’s trying to say. ‘It feels like you’re letting go of everything,’ she amends.

_And it would be so easy, wouldn’t it?_ she asks herself. _To let it all go. To lose control._


	12. Chapter 12

It’s after dark when Morgan, Hotch and JJ make their way back to the FBI headquarters. Traffic’s almost at a standstill; some people coming him from work, some just starting. Most vamps usually prefer to work the night shift, which means that the beginning of their work day always seems to clash with the end of everyone else’s.

As if he knows that they’ll be spending the night working this case anyway, Hotch puts a call through to the local Chinese restaurant – a place they get takeout from so frequently that Morgan’s sure the cooks have their order memorized. It’s a little different today, in order to account for the newest member of the team. The detours and the double rush hour ensure that it’s after seven when they step into the conference room, the smell of dinner wafting across the bullpen. It mingles with a variety of other scents; the dinners of everyone else that had decided to stay at work just a little bit longer.

Emily looks up from the file she’s perusing as they step inside. Reid and Rossi are at the whiteboard, its surface covered in red and black scrawls that were often mistaken for Reid’s handwriting. It doesn’t take long for Morgan to notice the fourth occupant of the room; the enthusiastic fairy that’s zipping between the row of laptops that is lined along the table. Garcia works in close proximity to the team when she can; apparently, it helps her “get her jiggy on.”

The rest of their interviews hadn’t been particularly productive. They had been given the Life and Times of Michael Joseph Conrad, but nothing that would outright explain why he had been murdered.

Morgan doles out seven bowls of steamed rice, Mongolian beef and cashew chicken. Technically speaking, he’s serving out six regular sized bowls, and one bottle-capful of finely diced cuisine. Garcia plants a tiny kiss on his neck in thanks; it’s fairly difficult to digest human sized food, and while there are some restaurants that do meals for the smaller species, the surcharge is outrageous.

Emily gives him a small smile as she takes the proffered bowl. It’s a gesture he accepts with some wariness. She has a long way to go before she makes it into his circle of trust. As it stands, she hasn’t even made it past the first barrier.

She does love her Chinese food, though – he’ll give her that. A lot of vamps lose the taste for real food, the sensation faded away after years of excessive blood consumption. From the way she’s attacking this meal with gusto, he knows that it isn’t the case.

‘Alright,’ says Hotch, when the last team member has finally put down their chopsticks. ‘What do we have?’

The answer is “Not a whole lot.”

‘No death threats have been made,’ JJ starts, and Reid fervently puts pen to whiteboard. ‘He hasn’t been acting particularly unusual, except…’

‘Except for leaving work early every Friday for the past six weeks,’ concludes Morgan. ‘But no-one knows why.’

‘I did a search; medical history, financials. For those six weeks, he’s been getting a weekly payment of two grand. I checked with the other victims. They, too, had brief missing periods and were receiving vast sums of inexplicable dough before their untimely deaths. Apart from that, and the fact that they’re all dead ‘wolves, I can’t see any connection. Different jobs, different lifestyles.’

Rossi takes over. ‘From what we can tell, he hasn’t had any strange experiences with a supernatural creature, but that doesn’t rule out the fact that someone – or something – might have been stalking him. A vampire might have been able to punch a hole in the wall, and subdue the victim without effort, but that doesn’t account for the lack of smell at the scene.’

‘They couldn’t have gotten rid of the smell somehow?’ Morgan asks, not willing to let go of the idea that a vampire is involved somehow. It’s not prejudice that’s driving him, it’s instinct.

‘With a spell, maybe. Probably, considering there was magic in the air,’ provides Emily. ‘But there aren’t that many vamp sorcerers. Some of the older ones can mask their smell from non-vampires, but we’re talking thousand-year old vamps here. There aren’t many of them left.’

‘The Fallen?’ asks Reid, and in reply, Emily gives a gesture that is half-way between a shrug and a nod.

‘Then we thought that it could be just a sorcerer. Explains the magic, the hole in the fence. Autopsy results will show if anyone used a compliance spell on him.’

‘It could also be a team,’ says Reid. ‘If they’re killing ‘wolves for a reason, then they’d want to make sure they could overpower him.’

Ideas are tossed back and forth until well after midnight, by which time the less empowered members of the team are beginning to feel the fatigue.

‘Go home,’ Hotch tells them. ‘Get some rest. We’ll come back and look at this fresh in the morning.’

Morgan is almost about to protest, when he realizes that it doesn’t really matter, considering he’s not going home anyway.


	13. Chapter 13

Emily accompanies the rest of the team, minus Hotch, down to the parking garage. The Unit Chief had told them of his intention to “finish up some stuff,” but they all know that he’ll probably be sleeping in his office tonight. JJ had almost stayed behind as well, but without the media liaison, Garcia has no way home. Most cars aren’t exactly built for someone less than a foot tall.

In her peripheral vision, she notices that Morgan is still eyeing her carefully. His suspicion turns to guarded surprise when she remotely unlocks her car. The black BMW had been damn expensive, and she’s glad that someone has finally noticed it.

She reasons that he’s probably not interested in it because he’s big on cars. It’s probably something to do with the fact that she can afford a BMW on an FBI salary. Screw him, though. If he wants to know, he can ask. She’s not going to start telling him her life story just because he’s getting all mistrustful.

‘I’ll see you all bright and early,’ JJ says. She’s attempting to smile, but despite the stellar press face, no-one’s really buying it. Garcia flits in through the open driver’s side door, strapping herself in with a modified seatbelt.

Rossi gives a grunt in reply, but it’s an amiable grunt. Morgan doesn’t say anything as he slips his motorcycle helmet on. Reid is parked one level up, and had given his own farewells as he stepped off the elevator.

Emily herself gives a short, ‘See you,’ before opening the door and sinking into the leather upholstery. She’s going to wait for everyone else to leave, out of a long held sense of security, rather than anything else. She doesn’t want to be followed.

Her apartment building is in Bathory, a fairly mixed district in the city’s west, that isn’t rife with gang violence like some of the other regions. There are a few murders ever now and then; mostly isolated incidents, with clear-cut motives and offenders, but you get that wherever you live. That’s human nature, even if the human in question drinks blood, or is a wolf for one day of the month.

She’s not driving there now, though. She’s driving north – towards the sanctuary. Her abilities had been severely diminished by the sunlight, and she wants the chance to take a look at the scene under the cover of darkness. For the time being, the sanctuary can’t be used for its traditional purpose; last Emily heard, the alpha of the pack had been scrambling to make other arrangements for the full moon in two nights time. It’ll be tricky. There isn’t exactly an abundance of fenced in land for fifty or so ‘wolves, ‘tigers, ‘lions and other varieties of lycanthrope to simply roam free. If worse comes to worst, then they’ll be sedated and locked down for the night. That’s an option that no-one is really that happy with.

She parks at the entrance, her headlights illuminating the yellow crime scene tape. There’s no one else there, but she knows that the tape is spelled to only let in authorized personnel. Technically speaking, she fits that criteria, but that doesn’t means she’s supposed to be there.

Her heart sinks slightly when she hears the motorcycle pulling up. She’s not surprised that he had come here. She _is_ surprised that he made it here after her. Though, she reflects, he probably took a detour through Bane. It’s a longer route, but it would have kept him in ‘wolf-friendly districts.

As suspected, he’s not happy to see her. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asks, not bothering to hide the annoyance from his voice.

‘It’s a nice night,’ she shrugs. ‘I was thinking of maybe having a picnic.

_Great use of tact there_, she thinks, watching as his brow furrows. Her failed attempt at a joke certainly hasn’t helped the situation. _Seven hundred years, and you can’t even have a proper conversation?_

‘I’m a little more useful when the sun’s not hanging around,’ she amends, staring upwards at a moon that’s almost full. Thanks to a nifty bit of magic from some of the city’s wizards, the light pollution doesn’t affect stargazing. There are millions of tiny dots scattered across the sky. With enhanced senses, it’s truly a beautiful sight to behold. ‘I wanted to see if there’s anything we missed.’

He tenses slightly, and she wonders if it’s because he thinks that she has actually come to cover up evidence, or to sabotage the scene in some way.

‘Give me some credit,’ she says, not bothering to hide her own irritation. ‘If I wanted to betray you, I would have done it already.’ The brutal honesty seems to relax him somewhat, but not enough for him to let down his guard. It’s no consolation that he’d be on edge even if she weren’t here.

Sighing, she checks that her weapon is firmly fastened to her hip, and walks calmly towards the crime scene tape. Though she can’t see him now, she can sense that he is still standing still.

‘Are you coming, or not?’ she asks. ‘We haven’t got all night.’

He’s at her shoulder in less than ten seconds. She can feel his breath upon her neck. When he speaks, his voice his soft.

‘This doesn’t mean I trust you.’

In spite of the situation, she gives a slight grin.

‘I never said it did.’__


	14. Chapter 14

It feels different, being here when it’s this dark. Usually, in this place, by this time of night, he’s covered in fur, and roaming as far as the confined space will allow him. In that form, he sees the world very differently. Smell and hearing are the most acute of a ‘wolf’s senses, their potency multiplied when in animal form. If not for Emily’s presence, and for the fact that he would lose a lot of his cognitive functioning, he would have shifted right then and there.

He’s stuck with the limitations, though. Instead of claws, he has a Glock 19 strapped to his waist. Had he known that he isn’t going to be alone tonight, he might have packed something a little heavier. There isn’t much room for a full arsenal on the bike – one of the main reasons he had taken a Bureau vehicle when visiting the scene earlier in the day. There’s some stuff in the saddle-bag, but going back now will only exacerbate the mistrust in the air. He’s not sure why he suddenly cares so much.

Thankfully, though, the Glock is loaded with bullets that will, at the very least, slow down all manner of creatures, providing he can make the shot.

‘It’s nice,’ Emily comments, after they’ve walked a short distance. ‘A slice of nature in amongst all the hustle and bustle.’ The small talk is forced, and they both know it, but it doesn’t mean she’s wrong. The juxtaposition of sky and trees would be beautiful if it didn’t have such negative connotations. This is the place where he spends his least favorite time of the month. The place where control is out of his grasp. That’s another reason why he’d prefer not to shift.

It looks different in this light, and yet it’s still the same.

Emily, too, looks different in this light. Powerful. Almost ethereal. She’s in her element, he realizes, and if she suddenly decides she wants to kill him, he’s going to have a hell of a fight on his hands.

‘It has its moments,’ he answers, which isn’t really an answer, but it’s all he’s going to give her.

The closer they get to the primary crime scene, the stronger the scent of death becomes. It’s more potent now that there’s just the two of them. No other scents to confound the olfactory receptors. It will stick around for a few more days, at least. Not as long as the memory, but still long enough.

Emily puts her fingers to the grass. ‘There’s residual magic. Probably from the crime scene techs.’

Morgan raises an eyebrow. ‘I thought vampires hated using magic.’

She snorts inelegantly. ‘Most of them do,’ she says. ‘A vampire’s power lies in taking something – blood, for instance – from others. While magic uses a lot of catalysts to focus and adjust the energy, ultimately, the power comes from the wielder. Most clans find it easier to use human sorcerers. Always about the power.’

Morgan nods, though he knows most of this already. While it hadn’t been a topic of discussion in his law degree, he’s been with the unit long enough to pick up a few things. Hanging around Reid all day doesn’t hurt either. Emily’s exposition doesn’t explain why _she_ seems comfortable with the concept of magic.

‘My father dabbled a bit,’ she shrugs in response to his unanswered question. ‘I can do a few basic things, but not much, really.’

Morgan shrugs his jacket off, and rolls up the sleeve of his shirt, revealing the spell bands that encircle his upper arm.

_I’ll show you mine if you show me yours._

She smirks, but it’s an expression that hides a much deeper emotion. Relief? Her eyes – dark brown, even in the strong moonlight – focus on the marks against his skin.

‘Magic circle against evil?’ she asks, her lip twitching.

He gives her a surprised grin. ‘Protection and strength. Just shields. Haven’t had the training to work the real spells.’

She gives him a grateful smile, at which point he realizes that they’ve started to kindle the fires of trust. It’s not much – the magic isn’t hidden, by any means – but it’s something.

Morgan lets his senses roam, nostrils seeking out something beyond the smell of death. It’s not long before he finds something.

‘Fear.’

‘What?’ Emily asks, brow furrowing slightly.

‘I can smell the fear. It’s faint, but…’

She closes her eyes, trying to find that scent. Her main senses aren’t as strong as his, but they’re still strong when compared to any other creature. Plus, he can’t tell someone how fast their heart is beating.

‘There’s something else,’ she says, not yet opening her eyes. ‘I can’t…there’s magic blocking it, but it’s there, trying to get out.’

For a moment, Morgan wonders why she senses what he can’t, before he realizes that she isn’t noticing the scent, but the magic that’s blocking it. He remembers Rossi had felt the same thing; they’ll get the crime scene analysis eventually.

‘We knew that already,’ he says. ‘This morning, with Rossi-’

‘No,’ she cuts him off. ‘This is new.’

And then he smells it. It’s encompassed by the fear, but it’s growing stronger. The magic that’s trying to contain it isn’t quite enough.

He turns, just in time to see the man standing just feet away from them. Vampire. Not powerful, by any means – he still has vestiges of human in him. Short, sandy hair. Sunken eyes. Half a dozen spell bands tattooed down the length of his left arm.

But that’s not what Morgan’s paying attention to.

He’s looking at the silver knife in the vamp’s right hand.


	15. Chapter 15

‘Drop the knife,’ Morgan commands, his gun already out and leveled at the vampire’s chest. The vampire laughs, a sound that might have sent a lesser ‘wolf running. Most wolves aren’t trained in behavioral analysis, though. As well as the laugh, Morgan notices the body language that suggests that this vamp isn’t really ready for this fight.

‘Let me take care of this,’ Emily says firmly, her own weapon drawn. He can see that her gaze is fixed upon the knife. Is she trying to _protect_ him?

He’s about to refute her assumption when their assailant strikes. He’s fast, even for a vampire. Fast enough that Morgan’s being tackled to the ground before he even has a chance to realize what’s going on. It’s an embarrassment that he’ll have to live down later. If he survives.

There’s a struggle as he tries to stop the knife from plunging into his flesh. Hell, even if he lets the thing _touch _him, he’ll start feeling the effects. The vamp has the advantage; the knife, a dominant position, and those half a dozen spell bands that could very well be six different varieties of death curse.

Morgan has Emily.

She doesn’t look like she could bench press an elephant, but that’s the thing with vamps. They don’t need the exaggerated muscle mass. They get the power from the virus that’s metamorphosised them. That, and the blood. But that’s a package deal.

All of a sudden, Morgan finds himself unburdened of his attacker. He stands just in time to see the vampire crashing into a nearby tree. Emily has dropped her gun, and adopted a fighting stance. This isn’t the first blood battle she’s been in.

The knife still in his hand, the vamp struggles to his feet.

‘This is your last warning,’ Emily says, but it doesn’t sound like her voice. It sounds like a voice that’s teetering on the precipice of control, as though she’s just about ready to let go of everything and tear this guy to pieces.

Instead of surrendering, which would have been the smart move, the vamp uses the knife to slice open his palm. He’ll use the blood to activate the spell bands on his arm. They’re active magic, rather than the passive shields that Morgan’s own bands take the form of. They’re more powerful, but they also take more out of the caster.

Sensing that this is about to go very, very badly, Morgan grabs for his gun, firing two shots from the hip. They both hit the vamp square in the chest, but it’s not enough to stop him from wiping the bleeding palm across his upper arm. The bands glow momentarily, before disappearing entirely. The vamp has assimilated the magic, the spells now at his disposal. A complex, but effective method of giving magic to those who don’t usually wield it.

They keep their distance. A melee attack now will disturb the magic, which can lead to disastrous consequences – the kind of consequence that will involve their scorched body parts being picked up by volunteers armed with tongs and nose pegs. In some circumstances, it’s almost safer to wait, and see just how your enemy is going to try and kill you.

The vamp puts his hand out, flame starting to curl along his fingertips. Shit. Fire. The element is an equal opportunity offender, effective in killing vampires, werewolves and wizards alike.

Morgan shares a sideways glance with Emily, any animosity they might have had towards each other before forgotten in the heat of battle. They hadn’t prepared for this. It would have been different, were they expecting trouble, but it was supposed to have been simple reconnaissance. Any field equipment that might help them is out of reach by this point. The best they can hope for is that someone might see the flames before they burn to death.

The light of the moon catches his eye.

Technically speaking, this close to the full moon, he could shift without incurring too much pain. The closer it gets, the easier it becomes. He can almost feel the hair along his knuckles starting to rise involuntarily, as if willing him to take the plunge. Being in his wolf form won’t make him any less vulnerable to fire or silver, but it might give them a fighting chance against the vamp.

All of these thoughts have taken place in the split second since he’d seen that orange glow. There’s no more time for thinking. It’s time to act.

Evidently, Emily feels the same way, because starts moving at the same time as Morgan, looking to take down the other vampire before he has a chance to accidentally burn the sanctuary to the ground. The way he stares at the flame, almost mesmerized, tells Morgan that he doesn’t have much experience with magic. In fact, Morgan would place bets on the fact that this guy hadn’t even been a vampire for that long. He’s cocky, yes, but his confidence is unjustified. It doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference when it comes to power. Power in the hands of someone inexperienced can be far worse than the alternative. The inexperienced lack control. This vampire isn’t looking to do a controlled burn; he’s looking to raze the whole damn forest to the ground.

The good thing, though, is that inexperienced magic users can rarely deal with distractions. The moment Emily’s fist strikes the vamp’s face, he’s lost the hold over the magic. It’s either that, or risk blowing all three of them up. Morgan adds a second punch for good measure, and the vamp topples to the ground. He’s not unconscious, though. And he’s not finished.

He still has the knife.

Morgan had almost forgotten about the shining, silver thing. Unsurprising, considering they were distracted by the threat of being flambéd. He can see the thing twisting towards his stomach, as if in slow motion. And then it’s not there anymore.

Emily’s reaction time is so fast, she’s almost a blur. In the blink of an eye, Morgan finds himself being pushed aside, out of the reach of the knife. He doesn’t see what she does, but he hears the sickening crunch of bone. The distraction gives Morgan enough time to detach the cuffs from his belt, and restrain the dazed vamp. Infused with magic, the cuffs are guaranteed by their makers to contain 99.9% of all supernatural creatures. The remaining 0.1% are usually the ones you’d prefer to kill on sight anyway.

Emily groans, and that’s when Morgan realizes that the knife had managed to find a victim after all. The handle is protruding from her lower abdomen, blood already starting to spread.

She looks down at it, eyes wide.

‘Oh, shit,’ she mutters.


	16. Chapter 16

Emily feels the burning pain in her abdomen before she sees the knife. It’s enough to tell her what’s happened; she’s been stabbed enough in her life to remember how it feels. She comes to her senses quickly enough to swat Morgan’s hand away before he can get near the wound.

‘Are you fucking stupid?’ she seethes, remembering too late that injury has always been accompanied by acerbic insults on her part. There’s a look on his face that’s part hurt, part anger. ‘It’s silver,’ she reminds him, her own hands feeling for the object that is impeding further healing. Her hands are sticky with blood before she finds it, the handle cold against her skin. Shaking fingers grasp the protrusion, teeth gritted. No matter how fast she heals, it always seems to hurt like hell.

She lets out an involuntary whimper as the knife jerks free. Immediately, Morgan’s hands are pressed up against the wound. Already, the flesh is starting to knit itself back together, and it’s a matter of making sure she doesn’t die of blood loss first.

‘Have you got a first aid kit in your car?’ he asks, dark eyes filled with worry. He came here on his motorcycle, she remembers. Not much room for gauze and magic-infused healing packs.

‘Yeah.’ She sits up slowly, her stomach twisting in pain.

‘Lay down,’ he insists. ‘You’re making it worse.’

‘I’m fine,’ she tells him through gritted teeth, which is nothing more than a bald-faced lie. It’s not the worst pain she’s ever been in, but that’s not to say it’s a walk in the park. ‘We need to get to the car, and Wonder Boy here isn’t going to be walking in his condition.’

He looks at the vamp that tried to kill them, or, more accurately, at the neck Emily had snapped just moments ago. He isn’t dead, though. Healing will just take a while; maybe a day. Much longer than her own healing will take.

‘You can walk?’ he asks, voice uncertain. It’s his abhorrence of vampires jostling against the fact that he doesn’t hate her as much as he’d like to think.

‘Yeah,’ Emily chokes out, and though she’s trying to keep the pain out of her voice, she’s pretty sure he knows she’s lying. In any case, she accepts his help standing, and doesn’t protest when he puts her arm around his shoulder. The other hand is still pressed to the wound, in lieu of a bandage. It’s not much, but it will suffice until they make it to the car.

Instead of leaving their incapacitated prisoner there, and making two trips, Morgan picks up the unconscious vampire by the scruff of his neck, and hoists him into a fireman’s lift. She gets the feeling that the ‘wolf doesn’t want to stick around longer than is necessary.

‘Now you’re sure I don’t need to carry you too?’ he asks, something in his voice suggesting that he’d probably prefer it that way.

‘I’m sure,’ she assures him, but almost regrets it when they take their first step, and the pain shoots through her torso. If she were jacked up on human blood, this would be nothing. A mere flesh wound. Even with the excess nourishment in her system from earlier in the day, she thinks she’ll probably need a booster before the night is through.

And the sad thing is, it isn’t the worst first day she’s had. All things considered, it had gone pretty well. Hotch will probably come around, and Morgan hasn’t left her for dead, both of which are good signs, in her book. It’s her reasons for being on the team that bother her. She doesn’t exactly top the promotion list, especially not when the prestigious Behavioral Analysis Unit is involved. She can think of at least a dozen vamps that are in actually in the good books of the higher ups, _and_ are pretty good at their jobs. Maybe they sent her here to get stabbed by a vamp hell-bent on killing. She wouldn’t put it past them.

When they get to the car, she pulls her keys from her pocket with bloody fingers and hands them to Morgan. Clutching onto him is all she can do to stop herself from collapsing in agony.

He tosses the cuffed vamp into the back seat of the car, not really caring if doing so breaks a few more of his bones. Hell, she’s silently approving of the force that he’s using, even if the vamp won’t feel it until later, and even though it means she may have to dish out the cost to reupholster the back seat.

‘Trunk,’ she tells him, using as few words as possible. Her arm unhooks from his shoulder, and she almost drops to ground before he catches her.

‘Careful there.’ His words are like honey; thick, heavy, and sweet. They’re also the last thing she hears before she passes out.


	17. Chapter 17

He gently lowers her to the ground, trying not to exacerbate the already deadly looking wound. It’s not as bad as it looks. He hasn’t really dealt with vampire first aid before, but he knows that they heal faster than most other species, the older ones especially. He doesn’t know how old Emily Prentiss is, but she’s old enough to walk in the sunlight without burning to a crisp.

One eye still on his unconscious colleague, he opens the trunk and lets out a breath. He knows that some people keep things in their car for emergency situations – blankets, spare clothes, food and the like – but this is more than he’s ever seen. There’s the expected tool box and first aid kit, the aforementioned blankets, spare clothes and food, but there’s also what looks like half an armory in there. Guns and ammunition (silver and otherwise), wooden stakes, vials of holy water, even a sword tucked away at the back. It seems almost logical, since she’s ostracized by most of the vampire population, but he’s not so sure that there isn’t another motivation behind her vigilance.

He puts the first aid kit on the ground beside her still form. One of the half a dozen tiny white packages in there will speed up the healing process, though at the expense of most conscious functioning. It’s almost a good thing, then, that she’s already unconscious.

He realizes quickly that he’ll need to put the healing pack to skin for the magic to work as intended, and his fingers go to the buttons of her shirt. She might be upset that he had undressed her while she was unconscious, but at least she won’t be dead.

The first thing that catches his eye as he slips the blood-stained blouse isn’t the still bleeding wound, or the black, silken bra. It’s the scar. It’s not big by any means - a small cross on her right shoulder blade – but it’s red, and raw, even though he can tell that it’s an old wound. Her body jerks slightly when he brushes his fingers across it in wonder. He reminds himself to ask her about it later.

He straps the healing pack across the still-bleeding wound, a few sparks flashing as the magic starts to work on the wound. In conjunction with her body’s natural healing processes, it shouldn’t take much longer than a few hours for the wound to repair, but she’ll be out of it until the next morning at least. The pain will stick around for a little longer, though. Magic isn’t without its side effects.

It doesn’t seem right to leave her looking so bare, though, so he pulls a blanket from the trunk, and tucks it around her. He doesn’t want to violate her privacy any more than he already has.

She’s not that heavy – not to him – and it takes little effort to lift her from the ground. The passenger’s side seatbelt locks in with an audible click. With their still healing prisoner in the back seat, the first stop will have to be at FBI headquarters. He can’t very well be carting around an incapacitated vampire in his unconscious colleague’s car, prisoner or no. He’ll have to come back later anyway to pick up his bike, providing no enterprising thief knocks it off in the meantime.

He shifts the car into first gear, idling noting that the clutch is a lot smoother than most other cars that he’s driven.

He drives as fast as the speed limits allow. There are no portable sirens in the car, and the distraction of being pulled over isn’t one he wants to deal with. All he wants is for the vamp in the back seat to regain consciousness so he can explain why he killed fourteen werewolves. Though he wouldn’t mind asking Emily why she found it necessary to let herself take a knife wound for him. Pragmatically speaking, it makes sense – the wound that wounded her probably would have killed him – but he’d still like to hear it in her words.

As he drives through the familiar streets, his eyes constantly jerking between the road, the back seat, and the passenger’s seat, it doesn’t really occur to him just how much has changed in the last twelve hours.

*          *          *

The parking garage is still relatively full; the vehicles of workaholics, vampires and people that don’t sleep. Morgan parks as close to the elevators as he can, earning a strange look from a departing agent as he hoists the vampire out of his back seat.

He stops, briefly pondering how he’s going to work this. He settles on carrying Emily over his shoulder, and dragging the other vamp behind him. Technically speaking, it’s not the most practical way to do things, but Morgan would be lying if he said he didn’t want to inflict as much pain as possible on the man in their custody.

The elevator dings at the fifth floor, and Morgan exits, turning to the left. The holding cells are down this end of the hall, along with the interrogation rooms and the medical office.

‘Interesting night?’ the agent at the desk – Harris, his badge says - asks him, looking up from his copy of _Magic Monthly_.

Morgan looks down at his blood-stained clothes. He knows the kinds of things that go on in this building. His appearance is probably fairly low on the list of interesting things going on tonight. He hears a loud screech from one of the holding cells, only giving evidence to his suspicions.

‘One for the cells,’ he says, which doesn’t really answer the question. ‘Neutralized vamp with spell bands. Still healing. Name unknown. Suspected for murder and attacking a federal agent.’ He signs and dates the proffered form, marking it with a bloody handprint.

‘We’ll give you a buzz when he’s ready for interrogation,’ Harris says, relieving Morgan of his burden. ‘I’ll get someone from med to give him a look-over.’

He watches for a few seconds as the vampire is thrown into a cell, an event that is accompanied by a second screech and a blinding flash of light.

Harris shrugs. ‘She’s harmless. Mr. Vampire there might have a splitting headache in the morning, but that’s about it.’

Morgan doesn’t complain. He instead adjusts his hold on Emily, so that he’s carrying her bridal style. She doesn’t even stir, which he takes to be a good sign. If she wakes up now, she’ll be in a world of pain.

He sets off to find Hotch.

*          *          *

Hotch is reading a file diligently when a dark shadow blocks the light from the hallway. He looks up to ask what his visitor wants, but is momentarily at a loss for words. Morgan’s standing there, with an unresponsive Prentiss in his arms, blood staining both of them.

There’s a beat.

‘You killed her _already_?’

Morgan’s mouth opens in shock. ‘No, we were ambushed.’

Hotch raises an eyebrow. Apparently there have been some developments, and not just where the case is concerned. Morgan looks almost indignant at the suggestion that he might have harmed the woman he was so recently hell-bent on getting rid of.

‘I went back to the Sanctuary,’ Morgan reveals, and Hotch is unsurprised. While Morgan isn’t a particularly dedicated member of the pack, he is still taking this one personally. ‘She was already there. We checked out the scene, and we got attacked. By a vampire with a silver knife.’

Hotch is slightly skeptical. Silver knives aren’t so uncommon. But then, a vampire with a silver knife at a restricted crime scene is a little suspicious.

‘She saved my life,’ he adds quietly, as if he’s almost afraid of admitting it.

Hotch keeps his face free from expression. ‘The vampire’s in holding?’ he asks.

 ‘Yeah. His neck is snapped, but that should heal soon enough.’ There’s venom in his voice, as if he doesn’t really want the guy to wake up. ‘We can interrogate him when he can talk without screaming in pain.’

Hotch nods. ‘Okay. You two need rest. There are probably a couple of spare beds in med. Get a few hours sleep.’ He’s reluctant to let Morgan leave; the chances are high that some form of vigilantism would be involved. ‘Make sure she gets looked at.’ Hotch is appealing to the ‘wolf’s protective nature. This way, at least, he knows Morgan will stay by Prentiss’ side instead of going out and getting himself killed.

‘You should get some rest too, Hotch,’ Morgan suggests.

Hotch nods again, but he has no intention of sleeping.


	18. Chapter 18

Some time ago.

_It is just before sunset when she finds herself riding into the village, the series of spell-bands on her upper arm the only things that are stopping the townspeople from outing her as a bloodsucker and burning her at the stake. They were strong spells once, put there by her father. It’s been six months since his death, though, and her skills are nowhere near as great. The bands will disappear, if met with any opposing magic of greater force, and she’s hoping fervently that if it ever does happen, it will happen at night._

_Right now, she is, for all intents and purposes, human._

_It’s not as though there are many sorcerers to be found in these parts, anyway. Most of those with any magical ability tend to prefer the larger cities, where it’s much easier to become anonymous. There’s rarely more than one or two witches or wizards in a town like this, and they’re rarely anyone of great power. Some villagers distrust magic, but they’ll take it over a murderous creature any day. They’ve had magic in one form or another since before the fall. Vampires and shapeshifters are still, in their eyes, ruthless beasts._

_She dismounts her horse at the village inn, the roughly painted wooden sign proclaiming it to be the “Vampyr’s Fang.” For a superstitious bunch, they sure seem to like their cliché names. There aren’t any other inns in town though, so she unstraps her sword and slips it into the saddle-bag. She still has the dagger in her boot, and two vials of holy water in a pouch on her belt. It’s not enough to defend herself completely, but it’s enough to cause a distraction._

_‘Good boy,’ she whispers to the horse – a young stallion by the name of Forthwind, bequeathed to her by her father. The spell band tattooed on the dark animal’s leg will prevent any sticky-fingered individuals from helping themselves to her possessions._

_Several of the inn patrons look up as she enters. After the Fall, it’s not so unusual to see armor-clad strangers wandering the lands, but that doesn’t stop them from being curious. She’s wearing light leather armor atop her clothes, which is paltry compared to some of the full plate that some adventurers wear._

_‘What can I get you?’ the man behind the bar asks, eying her curiously. She’s willing to bet that he’s seen far stranger people, but it probably doesn’t stop him from wondering._

_‘Hydromel,’ she says, and then, after a moment’s consideration, adds, ‘and the beef stew.’ She’s not particularly hungry for human food – she’d drank some deer’s blood on the journey – but anyone paying any amount of attention will be suspicious if a weary traveler turns up their nose at food after a long day’s journey._

_She hands him half a dozen coins from the pouch on her belt, still leaving a considerable amount for later use. He gives her a grunt of thanks as she retreats to the far corner of the inn._

_Most of the patrons give her a wide berth, save for one. He’s young – barely even a man. She puts him at around nineteen, if a day. There’s a short silence as he sits across from her._

_‘What do you want?’ she asks, trying to sound as annoyed as possible. What she really wants is some form of human contact, but at the same time, she doesn’t want to risk anyone’s life. That’s the price she pays for immortality._

_‘You look lonely,’ he says, shrugging, but already she knows that it isn’t the truth. He can’t _see _her loneliness, he _feels _it. He’s an empath and he doesn’t even know it. ‘My name is Rowan,’ he says, holding out a hand. He gestures to the opposite corner of the room, where a man is staring at them. ‘My father’s the constable of this village.’_

_A sorcerer. She can’t tell how strong he is, but she’ll have to be careful around him nonetheless._

_‘Emeline,’ she reveals, shaking his hand. He has smooth skin. Skin that hasn’t seen suffering, or death, or any of those other horrors that the world has taken great pains to provide them. She envies his innocence._

_‘You’re from France?’ he asks, referring, she thinks, to the etymology of her name._

_‘My father,’ she replies distantly, her mind instantly going to the man that had been torn from her life so abruptly. The name means “rival”, he had once told her, and it’s true in a way. She’s a rival to her own people, the same as her father. They had killed him. _

_She wonders how long it would be before they killed her too._


	19. Chapter 19

Morgan leaves the office, pulling the door closed with his foot. As soon as the latch clicks into place, Hotch lets out a breath.

They’ve got someone.

No indication of whether or not he is actually the person that killed all of their victims, but it’s much further than they were before. It’s with some regret that he lifts the handset of his phone to call in the rest of the team. They’d closed up their last case just two days ago – a rogue witch harvesting body parts from her numerous victims. Rest wasn’t exactly a commodity in plentitude.

‘_I can be there in fifteen_,’ is the greeting he gets, and he can’t help but smile. Reading him over a phone line isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do; the training is doing her well. She might be against reading people against their wills, but truth told, he doesn’t mind. It’s JJ, after all.

‘_Um…Hotch. I’m getting you really loud and clear, here.’_

He stops, and tries to clear his mind, but he can’t help but think what an idiot he is. _That’s right, Aaron, go ahead and think about how much you’re in love with the psychic while she’s-Shit._

‘I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable there, JJ,’ he says, his voice showing no signs of the embarrassment that he’s feeling.

‘_I’ve started blocking, so feel free to think about whatever takes your fancy_.’ He’s not sure if he’s imagining it, but there almost sounds as though there’s a certain smugness to her words. After all, it’s not the first time this has happened. By now, Hotch is fairly sure that the media liaison is aware of his feelings for her; feelings that he hasn’t acted on for fear of alienating a woman he highly respects, rather than any rule forbidding it. For some time, intimate relationships in the Bureau had been illicit, but after a rather nasty incident involving a succubus and an entire department, the rules had been loosened slightly. Should it be to both their liking, he is technically allowed to pursue a relationship, but it will be monitored by watchdogs within the Bureau. Some agents believe it’s not worth the hassle, and take a vow of celibacy, rather than accept the thought of the government keeping an eye on their relationship. When it had been suggested that they simply date _outside_ the Bureau, these agents had balked at the thought of taking any amount of time off work.

‘Prentiss and Morgan went back to the crime scene,’ he tells her, in spite of the fact that she almost definitely already knows. ‘They were attacked by a vampire. He’ll probably be out until morning at least, so take your time.’

‘_Are Morgan and Prentiss alright?_’

‘E-Prentiss took a knife wound, but she should be fine,’ he says, adding, after a beat. ‘Morgan might have strained something tackling.’ It gets the desired laugh, and JJ reiterates her promise to be back at the office within fifteen minutes, with Garcia in tow.

*          *          *

It’s not until after he’s put her down on the hospital bed that he realizes just how much blood he’s covered in.

‘I’m fine,’ he says, batting away the med Agent that’s trying to examine him. ‘It’s not my blood.’

They’re not the only ones in the medical office tonight; there’s a wizard in with exhaustion, and another vamp that hasn’t had the daily recommended dosage of blood, as well as a few other agents whose conditions he can’t readily diagnose.

‘It’s healing pretty rapidly,’ the med Agent who’s examining Emily tells him. ‘Usually it’s the kind of healing you’d see in the vamps that are jacked up on human blood, but if they’re old enough, that can cause it too.’

Morgan raises his eyebrows. ‘How old exactly?’ He knows that Emily’s mother is fairly old – one of the oldest, not to mention one of the most feared – but he’s not so sure about Emily herself. She doesn’t really act like someone who’s been around for centuries.

‘Three hundred, at least,’ the Agent tells him. ‘I could give you a more accurate answer with a blood test, but that’s-’

‘In violation of law,’ says Morgan. ‘Got it.’

The Agent nods. ‘With this level of healing, though, she should be fully functional in less than two hours, with a bit of transfusion. It’s a good thing you got the magic into her straight away though, or it might have been a lot harder.’

He’s not really listening any more, gaze fixed upon her pale form. The med Agent had removed the blanket to examine the wound, and he feels slightly voyeuristic staring at her so intently. In this light, the scar on her shoulder stands out against pale skin, and he finds his curiosity rising to the forefront.

_How old is she? How many lives has she lived before this one? What secrets is she hiding?_

A massive yawn overwhelms him, and he suddenly feels the exhaustion sinking in, even though it’s not even that late by his standards.

The med Agent gives him a sympathetic smile. ‘You can take the free bed next to hers if you wanted to stick around,’ he offers. ‘Though, if we end up needing it, we may have to kick you out.’

That, Morgan thinks, as he slips off his shoes and climbs onto the bed, is a chance that he’s willing to take.


	20. Chapter 20

Some time ago.

_She sleeps._

_Were she high on blood, the process would be much more difficult. Blood does strange things to the body. Heightens arousal, heightens stamina, heightens strength. The shapeshifters get their energy from the forces of nature. The sorcerers get their energy from inside themselves. The vampires steal their energy from others. The trifecta._

_The inn bed is not the most comfortable one, but after days of sleeping on the rocky ground, it’s one of the most wonderful things she’s ever experienced. She’ll stay in town for a day or two more – she thinks she deserves the rest. She’s been on the run a long time. After that, she’ll ride to the coast, find a boat that will take her across to France. There’s the slightest chance she’ll be able to track down her father’s family there, but even if she does find them, she doubts they would accept her into their fold. However much she hates her mother, the same blood runs through her veins after all._

_That’s the problem._

_Blood._

_The door to her room crashes open, and she’s awake and on her feet within seconds. On the offensive._

_‘What’s going on?’ she asks sharply, when it’s evident that there is no immediate threat from the innkeeper who is now standing in the doorway._

_‘Under attack,’ he says shortly. ‘Vampires.’_

_She hisses under her breath, going straight to the chest at the end of her bed. The armor is designed to be put on quickly, and she’s had enough practice at that. The sword unsheathes, glinting in the soft moonlight that shines through the window._

_‘How many?’ she asks, her voice low. She doesn’t doubt that they’re here for her, and scolds herself for being so careless. She may well have doomed the entire village because of her own foolish mistake._

_‘Four,’ he says, and she feels herself relax slightly. Four, she might be able to deal with, providing they aren’t already blood-frenzied. If they are, then she might as well say goodbye to her freedom without even putting up a fight._

The villagers aren’t helpless,_ she reminds herself. _They’ve got countermeasures for this sort of thing. _The thought doesn’t comfort her. She’s killed the last two pairs of enforcers her mother had sent against her. Apparently the Lady Elizabeth had wizened up. She didn’t take too kindly to traitors. She’s just glad it isn’t ten._

_Already, she can hear the noises of battle, her mind trying to box away the guilt as she hears the screams. This is why she likes to travel alone._

_There are a dozen or so villagers fighting – including the constabulary – and a few already lying bleeding in the dirt. She sees Rowan fighting side by side with his father, and desperately wants to tell the boy to run as far away as possibly, but she doesn’t need to be a precog to know that he would refuse. He’ll do whatever it takes to defend his kin._

_She pushes through to the first vamp, and he stops for a moment, looking at her in recognition. He drops the man he’s holding – blood still dripping from the neck. He has a new target now. She knows this vampire – one of her mother’s personal warriors. It had been his arrow that had torn through her chest as she fled from what had once been her home. Their swords meet, the sound reverberating, even amongst the din of mêlée._

_‘End this, Emeline,’ he hisses. From the look in his eye, she can tell that he isn’t quite full of blood – not yet. A couple more villagers and he’ll be there. She’s not going to let him._

_‘No.’ There’s no hesitation, no doubt. She isn’t going back. She _can’t_ go back._

_‘They will all die.’_

Not if I can help it_, she thinks, but says nothing. She doesn’t want to distract herself any more than she already has. She’s already made so many mistakes. Mistakes that she never, ever wants to make again._

_They fight._

_She’s hoping that it will draw the other three vampires towards her, and for once today, luck is going her way. Of course, that means she’s now surrounded. It doesn’t matter how good she is with a sword – it’s been a while, and she isn’t going to win this fight alone._

_She feels the magic, rather than sees it. The distraction she’d provided had given Rowan’s father the time to pull out a spell._

_The town constable is evidently much more powerful that she’d thought – a single burst of energy takes down two of them. She gets the strangest feeling that they probably would have won without her intervention, albeit with casualties. _

_He decapitates them with two swift strikes, and turns his attention back to the remaining vampires. She isn’t paying attention to that, though – she’s more concerned with the sword that’s just made a slash across her abdomen. The wound isn’t particularly deep, but the suddenness of it has her gasping for breath anyway. It doesn’t matter how many times you get stabbed, it’s still painful._

_‘You can’t run forever,’ she’s told, and she almost retorts, but he is felled before her eyes. The other quickly follows._

_Her hand is at the wound, the redness soaking her hand. Deeper than she had initially thought, apparently. She tries to stand, but stops when she realizes that there is a sword at her throat._

_‘They were here for you.’ It isn’t a question, it’s an outright fact. She doesn’t try to deny it._

_‘Yes,’ she breathes, a wave of pain shooting through her body. The wound will start to heal soon, and she really doesn’t want to deal with the questions that will raise. Apparently, it doesn’t matter. They already know._

_‘You’re one of them.’_

_She says nothing, and doesn’t resist when he lays a hand upon her shoulder, neutralizing the spell bands. They’ll be able to see the fangs now, and if they were to leave her for the sunrise, she would burn to ash. In some ways, it would be so much easier._

_She closes her eyes, and waits for something. Anything. What she doesn’t expect is a kick to the ribs. It’s close – far too close – to the stab wound, and she finds herself falling to the ground, gasping in pain._

_‘Stop!’ Rowan’s at his father’s side, and she can barely see him through the blurry edges of unconsciousness. An empath, she remembers. The agonizing pain she feels, he feels too. Even if he doesn’t know it. ‘Don’t kill her,’ he says, and it sounds as though he’s speaking from a thousand leagues away_

_‘I’m not going to kill her,’ the constable says, and it’s by far the most horrifying thing she’s ever heard. As much as vampires hate humans, humans hate vampires much, much more. There’s fear mixed in with the hate, and sometimes fear makes people do things that they normally wouldn’t do._

_‘Move, and you’ll get a face full of holy water,’ she’s told, but it doesn’t really matter. She couldn’t move if she tried. The pain ripples at every twitch._

_She isn’t consciously aware of the armor being ripped from her prone form, or her body being pulled into a hog-tied position. The only indication of any of these things is the throbbing pain in her lower abdomen._

_She’s carried somewhere, and thrown to the ground, only it isn’t dirt this time, it’s something harder – stone, maybe. There’s a blurry flickering of orange, and she’s vaguely aware of a torch being lit._

_‘She didn’t do anything, father. She _helped _us.’_

_‘She _brought_ them here.’ And he isn’t wrong. This is all her fault. Whatever punishment they bestow upon her, she will be wholly deserving of. And if the pain in her abdomen is bad, it’s merely a trifle to the agony she feels when the cross is put against her shoulder._

_She screams._


	21. Chapter 21

Some time ago.

_Time passes. Sometimes it feels like it’s passing quickly, other times it’s creeping slowly, like tar. After three days, the pain hits her with as much force as it did the moment the cross first burnt her flesh. The small piece of wood is still there, bound to her body. They’re determined to make this last as long as possible._

_On some level, she’s aware of what is going on. She’s aware of the agony in her shoulder, of the raw wounds at her wrists and ankles. The wound in her abdomen has almost healed, but it seems like nothing compared to the rest of her circumstances._

_So focused on the pain, the events around her barely permeate her consciousness. _

_‘Why are you doing this?’_

_‘She’s one of them.’_

_On the fourth day, she feels the cold. Her skin turns to ice, though part of her mind is insistent on the fact that there is nothing but the cold stone that she has lain on for every day before this one. Her body shivers violently, ropes burning against her skin. She cries out, and at first, no-one comes._

_Then _he _comes._

*          *          *

_It’s the dead of the night when Rowan finds himself descending the stairs in darkness. Guards had been posted for the first two days, and then removed when it became evident that the vampire – _Emeline ­– _wasn’t about to escape any time soon._

_There are no other prisoners in this dungeon, the key to the only door hanging on a hook at the bottom of the staircase. He’s been down here enough with his father to navigate without the use of any light source; he doesn’t want anyone to discover his intentions._

_The door swings open with a slight creak, and he winces, before realizing that there’s no-one else – aside from Emeline – around to hear it._

_ He hears the soft whimper from across the room. The screams had been loud the first few hours; he could hear them, even from several buildings away. They’d died down quickly, but he has no doubt of the fact that she’s still suffering._

_Before her, he had only seen less than half a dozen blood-suckers, and all of them had only one motive. One of them had killed three villagers – including Rowan’s mother – before being taken down. Part of him thinks that he should hate them all indiscriminately for this, but then part of him also thinks that this is definitely the right thing to do._

_He kneels beside her, taking a moment to just look. If not for the shivering, he would have found himself assuming she was dead; her skin is pale, her body limp. He thinks she might crumble into dust should he even touch her. His hand brushes her cheek lightly. She’s cold – freezing, almost, which he really should have expected. Cold-blooded, his father calls them._

_He pulls the dagger from his belt, slicing through the length of rope that runs from her wrists to her ankles. Her body slumps, but she otherwise gives no reaction to this new freedom. The wrist and ankle bindings themselves prove a little more difficult; he makes the cuts carefully, trying not to break through the skin. The rope has already done enough damage, the friction leaving a red, bloody mess in its place._

_She twitches slightly then, and Rowan takes a deep breath. ‘Emeline,’ he whispers, hoping to elicit a reaction. The reaction he receives is a soft, whimpering moan, and he feels as though her pain is reverberating through him. The bandage sticks slightly, as he unwraps it from her shoulder, and it’s only when the cloth is pulled away altogether that he can see the result of the punishment his father had bestowed upon her._

_The wound is ugly, to say the least. The flesh is cauterized, and the burn seems to ripple out across her upper chest. The cross itself seems stuck – embedded into her skin – but Rowan knows that if he leaves it there, she will be dead within a few days, at the latest. He levers it out with the tip of his blade, trying desperately to ignore the increasingly loud sounds of pain._

_And then it’s out._

_Rowan breathes a sigh of relief as Emeline’s body relaxes. She’s not conscious yet, but he’s prepared for that. He’d gone hunting earlier in the day, slitting the deer’s throat, and draining its blood into his waterskin._

_The first few drops spatter slightly, as many landing in the mouth as around it. It’s a startling reaction. If she had been unresponsive before, she’s active now, if not entirely conscious of it. Her back arches, and her eyes flicker, and she makes a sound that’s part way between pain and confusion._

_He lets his hand stroke her cheek again, whispering her name softly. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’_

_But it’s not okay, because he’s all out of deer’s blood, and she isn’t even close to recovered yet. She needs to be out of town before sunrise, and that isn’t going to happen, at this rate. If she’s still here in the morning, then her life will be forfeit. _

_Human blood, he’s been told, is much more potent. It’s not the preferred solution, but it will get her out of here. He takes the knife and makes the cut along his forearm._

*          *          *

_Something pierces the darkness._

_Red._

_Blood._

_She drinks it in, feeling her body start to put itself back together, but it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough. She’s vaguely aware of her surroundings; of the dungeon, of the ropes that have just been cut from her wrists and ankles, and of the boy – the man – that’s kneeling beside her, making a cut in his arm._

No.

_It’s wrong. Why is it wrong? She needs the blood, and yet part of her is desperately begging for him to stop, only she isn’t quite up to articulating that point yet. The rich, wonderful smell of human blood hits her nostrils, and if she hadn’t already been so frail, it would have sent her weak at the knees._

No!

_She can’t fathom why her mind would be so against this. The scent of it tickles her nostrils as it comes closer and closer, and she’s livid right up to the point where the flesh touches her lips._

_She drinks._

_Her body reacts favorably, the weakness slowly falling away. She feels good. Very good. Better than she’s felt in a long time. She keeps drinking, vaguely aware of the fact that the flesh is slipping from her reach. She grasps it firmly, drinking deeper still, before a sound breaks through the haze of her consciousness._

_‘Emeline! Emeline, you have to stop.’_

_Emeline. Is that her name?_

_The flesh screams, and in one sudden moment she realizes._

No. Oh, please, no.

_She pulls away, even as the siren call of blood rings in her ears. She closes her eyes, tries to block it all out, tries to pull her mind together._

You’re not like the others. You don’t do this.

You are, and you always will be.

_The world comes crashing back, and she’s hyperaware of the blood that she can still taste on her tongue, of the cold stone floor, of the body of the young man that had only been trying to help her._

_He’s still alive. Barely. She can hear the slow, rhythmic beat of his heart, getting slower by the second. If she were to make an incision of her own – feed him some of _her_ blood, he would survive, but she does not want to subject anyone else to this curse. Mortality is a small price to pay for humanity._

_She sees the bag at his feet; all her belongings. She feels the tear come to the corner of her eye. Why did this happen? Why did she come here? She had only brought them grief. It seems to follow her around._

_She pulls a shirt from the bag, wrapping it around Rowan’s arm. The blood stains it quickly, and she tries to push away the temptation. It’s a temporary solution, but she can’t afford to stay longer than is necessary. She’ll make a scene on her way out of town; one that ensures someone will come to check the cell. It’s all she can do, save cursing him for the rest of eternity._

_She’ll ride until dawn, and wait out the day, then, by the light of the moon and the stars, she’ll keep on riding, hoping to find somewhere to belong. _


	22. Chapter 22

Present day.

It’s late – or rather, early – when he hears the sounds of Emily stirring. From the soft light of the medical office, he can see her body twisting, dark eyes taking in her surroundings.

‘Emily,’ he says softly, his hand hovering over hers. ‘Emily, it’s Morgan, can you hear me.’ He’s not quite sure what he expects – after all, they’ve known each other for less than a day, and for most of that time, he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming. He doubts she’ll even recognize him in the state of confusion that usually follows healing.

What he hadn’t been expecting was for her hand to shoot up and grab at his wrist. She’s incredibly strong, even in this diluted state, but it’s getting closer and closer to the full moon, and he’s no weakling even on the worst of days. He pries it off gently, repeating her name in the hopes of eliciting a reaction.

She murmurs something then – a name. ‘Rowan…’ She says it again, and it’s a name that he doesn’t recognize, but it seems important to her.

‘It’s Morgan,’ he repeats firmly, and her eyes narrow slightly, as if trying to focus on his face.

‘Morgan…?’ There’s a sudden spark of realization. ‘Morgan!’ She sits up before he can tell her not to, and then puts a hand to her abdomen, where, as far as he can tell, the wound is now close to fully healed.

‘I was dreaming,’ she says shortly, and somehow he knows that that is all she’s going to reveal on that front – at least for now.

‘Do you remember what happened?’ he asks, hoping that her confusion isn’t the result of some short-term amnesia.

‘Sure,’ she winces. ‘Checking out the scene, knife in the gut.’ She lifts the hospital gown that the med agent must have dressed her in, revealing the white bandage across her abdomen, in addition to a pair of black panties and – in Morgan’s opinion – some very nice thighs. She pulls back the white strip, and in place of the freely bleeding wound he had seen the previous night, there’s an ugly red scar.

It’s almost hypnotic, and part of him wants to just reach out and touch it, but he’s not so sure that Emily would react favorably to that. If it’s anything like the scars that he’s gotten during the full moon, though, it’ll stay like that for a couple of days, and then start to fade away. Any wounds made by fire or silver are an exception. That’s an eternal scar.

The thought of that reminds him of the cross burnt into her shoulder, but he isn’t going to ask pressing questions about her past while she’s in this state.

‘You got him back alright?’ she asks, and it’s a few seconds before he realizes that she’s talking about the vampire that had attacked them.

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘You broke his neck, though, so he’ll be out for a little while.’

She nods, biting her lips slightly. It’s with just the right amount of pressure that the fangs don’t break through the skin. He wonders how many necks she’s broken in her time, and, if there are more, how many of them had been vampires.

‘Good morning,’ the med Agent greets them, quickly shedding his latex gloves and replacing them with a new pair. ‘How are we feeling?’

Emily raises an eyebrow, as if it’s the stupidest question she’s ever heard. ‘Like I got stabbed,’ she says bluntly, softening slightly. ‘Sorry. I get…irritated after injuries sometimes.’

The Agent nods. ‘As is the case with most vampires.’

Her spine straightens, as if she’s had a rod jammed up there, and Morgan winces. Emily Prentiss does _not_ want to be compared with other vampires. Evidently the med Agent senses the tension that he’s created, because he quickly makes his departure.

Emily gets to her feet, blatantly ignoring the hand that Morgan holds out to help her. She isn’t wincing any more, and he gets the idea that she’s probably going to avoid talking about the wound as much as possible.

‘Where’s my car?’ she asks, and there’s a tiny bit of exhaustion in her voice that he knows she’ll never admit to feeling.

He raises an eyebrow. ‘You aren’t thinking about going out for donuts, are you?’

She gives a low laugh. ‘No. I can get donuts in the cafeteria. I have spare clothes in my car; I am _not_ going to work in a hospital gown.’

‘Wait…’ he almost double-takes. ‘_Work_? You’re seriously thinking about coming in today?’

She looks at him as though he’s some kind of creature from outer space. ‘Don’t think I’m going to lay here reading six month back issues of _Vapid Vamp _while you get to give the guy whose neck _I _broke the smackdown. I’m in on this, Morgan.’

He sighs, knowing that while Hotch might be able to win this battle, Emily certainly isn’t going to listen to him.

‘Parking garage,’ he tells her. ‘Right near the elevators.’

There’s a brief pause, and she hasn’t left yet. ‘Keys?’ she reminds him.

Right.

They’re in his pocket, still stained with her blood. She glances at them momentarily before giving him a short wave, and walking straight out. The gown aside, it’s difficult to tell how close she had come to death.


	23. Chapter 23

He walks into the conference room, taking one of the two available seats at the round table. Rossi gives him a sideways glance, which he ignores. He hasn’t cleaned the blood off himself yet – had come straight from the medical office.

‘She’s awake,’ he tells them, adding, with a slight scoff, ‘Getting a change of clothes from her car.’

Hotch raises an eyebrow. Evidently, that’s a conversation that will be had when she makes it back. Morgan’s not so sure whether he’ll be successful in convincing her to go home, or at the very least, get some rest.

It’s a little after three a.m, and everyone is looking a little worse for wear. Morgan’s sensitive nostrils can pick up the several distinct coffee types, the fifth of which JJ pushes towards him. He doesn’t need to ask how she had known. She always knows, even if she’s not listening.

‘We have an I.D. on the vamp you tagged,’ she announces. ‘His name is-’

‘William LaMontagne Junior,’ finishes Garcia, from her position on JJ’s shoulder. She levitates slightly, and then does a quick jaunt around the room. ‘I pulled his file from DHHS records. He’s a relatively new vamp; no criminal record.’ She buzzes around again, almost dive-bombing into one of the polystyrene cups on the table.

‘Did someone give her coffee?’ Hotch asks, not quite bothering to hide the exasperation from his voice.

‘Sorry,’ says Reid apologetically. ‘She looked tired.’

‘I think giving her a tiny sip of _your_ coffee is about equivalent to an entire cup of anyone else’s,’ JJ points out. ‘She’ll be bouncing off walls for hours.’

Reid gives a tiny shrug; not in apathy, Morgan knows, but more so because he’s not quite sure what other gesture to give.

The light-hearted moment is over, and JJ continues. ‘I gave his mind a quick once over, but someone’s been messing with his thoughts. I can’t get anything other than that.’

‘False memories?’ enquires Morgan. It’s entirely possible that a psychic or a sorcerer could be covering their tracks by convincing the vamp that he had committed the murders. That doesn’t explain why he had attacked them, though.

‘No,’ JJ shakes her head. ‘More like…psychic blocks. Blocked by someone much more powerful than me. There’s no way I can break through without scrambling his brain. We’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.’

Hotch bristles slightly; since the incident, he’s had trouble controlling his emotions when interrogating vampires. Morgan’s surprised that the initial meeting with Emily had gone as well as it did, considering the person responsible for Hotch’s reluctance. He’s not going to be the one conducting the interrogation.

‘As much as I hate to say it, Aaron…’ starts Rossi.

Hotch doesn’t miss a beat. ‘I know.’ He’s not looking at Rossi, though – he’s looking at the door. Morgan suddenly notices the scent of vampire stimulating his olfactory glands. Faint, but getting closer.

A minute later, Emily walks in. She has a slightly abashed look on her face, as if she’s embarrassed that everyone seems to be paying attention to her. In fresh clothes, she looks a little different; the form fitting black jacket gives her an almost mercenarial look. That, coupled with her overly pale skin makes the whole “vampire” thing a little more blatant. The wide eyes and slightly elongated teeth certainly don’t help.

‘Hey,’ she says, heading straight to the last available chair. She’s limping slightly, and Morgan can hear her breathing a little louder than is ordinary.

‘Are you alright?’ asks JJ, in concern. Any vibes Morgan is getting are probably being felt tenfold by a psychic.

‘Fine,’ says Emily, giving the media liaison a small smile. The fact that it’s probably not the truth does not go past anyone in the room. Lie or not, the discussion carries on without the matter being brought up. Morgan knows that if it becomes a problem, Hotch won’t hesitate to deal with it.

JJ and Garcia continue their treatise on the life of William LaMontagne Junior, at least, as far as this life is chronicled in the files. As with most people, there’s probably a great deal of information that had never made it as far as a database.

‘Prentiss, I’d like you and Morgan to interrogate him,’ Hotch announces, as soon as the info dump is complete. Morgan’s head shoots up, and he notices Emily making a similar reaction. Hotch doesn’t actively trust Emily yet, that much he knows. His reasons for putting her in the interrogation are pragmatic; a vampire unsub is more likely to react to a vampire interrogator. But that doesn’t take into account the fact that the interrogator in question had been stabbed less than twelve hours earlier.

‘Hotch, are you sure that’s the best idea?’ Morgan asks, earning him a slightly scathing look from Emily.

‘I can handle an interrogation, Morgan,’ she tells him, any warmth towards him she might have built up suddenly dropping away.

‘You were _stabbed_,’ he says bluntly.

‘And by the time Vlad the Impaler wakes up, I’ll be fine,’ Emily retorts, anger filling her voice.

‘Fine. Do what you want.’ He crosses his arms, looking straight ahead. It’s not his fault if she lets herself get killed. He can see her rolling her eyes in his peripheral vision, and chooses to ignore it.

Evidently this newly found amiability still requires some adjustment.


	24. Chapter 24

Several hours later, they stand at the other side of the one-way mirror, looking into the interrogation room. The man sitting at the table, his wrists cuffed, a spell band hastily imprinted on his forearm, does not look like a killer. He’d woken up not long ago, after transfusion of cow’s blood sped up the healing process.

Getting the chance to actually look at him shows a small-built man, kind of scrawny, in Morgan’s opinion. There’s something in his eyes that makes him seem as though he’s drunk on human blood, even though he hasn’t seen a drop in over twelve hours.

‘This is it?’ he asks, stunned. ‘This is the guy that’s been killing wolves all over the country?’ He had been expecting something…more.

‘It’s not him,’ says Emily bluntly. ‘There’s no way he could have done this.’ She’s standing a little steadier now, and he figures that this rapid healing is probably a big reason why most vampires live upwards of five-hundred years.

Garcia’s flitting about, never landing in one place for more than thirty seconds. She raises a tiny eyebrow. ‘Don’t be ashamed just because he got the drop on you, sweet cheeks.’

If Emily’s embarrassed by the insinuation, she doesn’t show it. ‘No, seriously. The guy’s been a vampire for less than ten years. There is no way in hell he could have killed thirteen shifters with no struggle, not even with magic.’

‘But why would he try and kill you then?’ asks Garcia landing, for the first time, on the vampire’s shoulder. Emily doesn’t seem perturbed by the passenger.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘But that’s what we’re going to find out.’

*          *          *

Emily shoots a glance at Morgan, and he lets her take the lead. Whatever his problem is, she’ll deal with later. After all, this is vampire politics. This is her life, as much as she loathes it.

William LaMontagne Junior fiddles absent-mindedly with the metal cuffs that encircle his wrist. He doesn’t look nervous, or anxious. If anything, he looks bored.

Morgan’s stands in the corner, making his presence known, but not intruding on Emily’s ground. She gives him a grateful smile for not arguing, and slides into the chair opposite LaMontagne.

‘So…William. Will. You’ve been a vampire for what, six years?’ she asks conversationally. It surprises both Morgan and LaMontagne. She guesses she’s supposed to be feeling some kind of anger at this guy for trying to kill her, but she doesn’t. If she kept going on those principles, then there’d be a lot of anger bottled up in side of her.

‘About that,’ he says, in an accent that puts his place of birth at somewhere near Bloodfern. ‘My daddy and I got ambushed one night. They killed him, turned me.’ The ease with which he gives away information only confirms their beliefs.

‘And yet you decided to work for them?’ A little less friendly now, a little more accusing. Even then, it’s not anger, it’s just the job.

He makes an indignant sound. ‘I don’t work for anybody but myself.’

‘Is that right? Tell me, Will. Have you ever killed someone?’

She can see him struggling with the question. As if he knows the answer he’s supposed to be giving, and yet can’t quite work out how he’s supposed to say it.

‘Fourteen lycanthropes have died over the past year. Last night, you tried to kill us at the most recent crime scene. Makes me wonder; do you know anything about these dead wolves?’

‘…Yes,’ he says, averting his gaze from the intense stares of both Morgan and Emily.

‘Did you kill them?’

‘Yes.’ It’s a dull, monotone voice. No expression to it. As if he’s only repeating what he’s been told to repeat.

There’s a moment of silence, before Emily says, ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You don’t believe me?’ he says, laughing slightly. ‘Well I’m sorry if the answer wasn’t quite what you were expecting, chere, but it’s the truth.’

Emily grins, revealing small fangs that are somehow incredibly intimidating nonetheless. ‘Oh, no, I don’t think it is the truth. Because, Will, when you kill someone, you change. You get this look in your eyes. You see the world differently. In the past six years, I don’t think you’ve changed at all.’

He opens his mouth, as if to protest, but she cuts him off. ‘You work for the people that turned you? Who are they?’

‘I work for _myself_,’ he repeats.

‘No you don’t. You’re nothing more than a lackey. You never get to make the kills. You hang around and wait for the leftovers. They want someone to attack two FBI agents, and you figure “Hey, why not,” because the two hundred years of prison is nothing compared to the respect they’ll give you when you finally get out. A small price to pay for power. After all, what’s two hundred years when you live forever?’

‘I killed them myself,’ he repeats.

‘You’ve never killed anyone before in your life, Will.’

‘I have,’ he says defensively.

‘Oh really? Then you can tell me what it’s like to tear the flesh from a body? You can tell me what it’s like to listen to the heart slowly beat down to nothing? You can tell me the satisfaction you feel when you drink the blood of something you killed with your bare hands? The human body has five quarts of blood in it, Will. Do you know how long it takes to suck every. Last. Drop of that from a person?’ She’s standing now, one hand on the table. Her breaths are coming faster. There’s a flash of red in her memory. A voice, screaming.

She holds it back.

The look on Will’s face tells her everything he needs to know. He’s the lowest of the low. Hasn’t killed so much as a wild beast, let alone fourteen werewolves.

‘Who are you working for?’ she asks again, sitting with a practiced calm. ‘There are five vampire clans in this city. Which one of them has you in its ranks?’

He mutters something that would be incomprehensible to human ears, but Emily hears it clear enough. She’s just not sure she wants to have heard it.

‘Say it again,’ she demands, as if hoping that the information has changed in the few seconds since he has revealed it.

He says it louder this time, sullen eyes starting at her. ‘Prentiss,’ he spits.

‘_Fuck_,’ Emily mutters.

This is really going to suck.


	25. Chapter 25

Hotch watches as Emily paces the conference room. The revelation of her mother’s involvement in this mess has thrown her, even if she’s not ready to admit it.

‘I’ve seen her maybe five times in the past century,’ Emily says, answering the unasked question.

‘You live in the same city,’ Hotch counters, frowning. Emily hasn’t lived here for long, granted, but long enough for her to have seen the woman that had birthed her.

‘I generally try to stay _away _from the people that want to kill me,’ she shrugs, finally sitting on the edge of a chair.

‘Wait,’ interrupts Morgan. ‘She wants to _kill_ you?’

Hotch, too, is mildly surprised. He had known that there was bad blood, no pun intended, but he hadn’t know that the elder Prentiss was set on seeing her daughter dead.

‘That makes two of us, right?’ She’s looking at Hotch now, dark gaze piercing his. He thinks of the scars on his neck; wants to touch them, but doesn’t. An uncomfortable silence ripples throughout the room. This certainly explains some things.

‘We need to question her,’ Hotch says, getting it out as quickly as possible. ‘If she or one of her followers is responsible for these murders, we need to know.’

Emily nods. ‘For the record though, sir, I think it’s a terrible idea.’

Hotch almost laughs. ‘I’ll agree with that one, Prentiss.’

‘I’ll make contact with the clan liaison,’ announces JJ. ‘Sevenish?’ she asks Hotch, and he gives her a nod. Any time before sunset would show a tremendous amount of disrespect. He doesn’t particularly care about what the vampires think of them, but it could go a long way in getting them to co-operate.

‘Tonight?’ Emily asks, frowning. Her reservations are less to do with the timing, and more to do with not wanting to see her mother, Hotch thinks.

‘Tomorrow night’s the full moon,’ he tells her matter-of-factly. ‘I don’t want us to be on the outskirts of town when full-strength rogue wolves are running around the woods.’

In addition to that, he’s fairly positive that Morgan won’t let them do the questioning without him.

It’s still several hours until sunset, so they use the time to go through the files of the clan members, profiling them. The more they can narrow the list down, the less time they’ll be required to spend at the clan headquarters tonight.

For Hotch, any amount of time is too much.

*          *          *

Emily scans the list of names; people that come under her mother’s command. _No, _she corrects herself. People her mother _control_. She doesn’t recognize many of the names – perhaps a third, at most. Some of whom are more familiar than others.

For a vampire, clan membership is not mandatory, but it does show species solidarity. Emily herself has no clan, and no intention of ever joining one. The majority of them are cesspools of corruption; full of people that assume just because they have the power, they can do whatever they want. It’s an unfortunate fact that most of the vampires she knows belong to a clan.

Every other member of the team is looking at the list; it had taken a warrant, and some phone calls from Hotch, because one trait that’s common among vampires (aside from bloodlust) is privacy. It seems incongruent to Emily that they are so keen on guarding their secrets, and yet so publicly flaunt their powers.

She doesn’t think she belongs in this world.

‘Check the list for sorcerers,’ orders Hotch. ‘If your vampire had spell bands on his arm, then someone had to have put them there.’

‘She’s not very magic-friendly,’ Emily finds herself saying. ‘I don’t think she would have let a sorcerer into the fold. Not even one who’s turned.’ How personal that particular piece of information is, she doesn’t say. ‘They’d most likely be depending on more underhanded methods. You can’t trust _anything _she says.’

Hotch nods with a grimace. He knows. The scars on his neck had not been from play-fighting, after all.

Reid, who’s a little further ahead of everyone else on the list, lets out a sound of disbelief.

‘What’s up, kid?’ asks Morgan.

‘Senator Richard Owens is a member of the clan,’ he says, and there’s a long, pained silence that somehow seems to echo.

‘It’s a matter of public record,’ says Garcia, having quickly tapped into the database with a superficially choreographed dance across the keyboard. ‘He isn’t hiding it.’

Reid nods. ‘It’s just…’

‘Surprising,’ finishes JJ.

Senator Richard Owens, public favorite for the next President. Emily’s met him once or twice, and he seems like a good person. It’s definitely disconcerting to know that he’s in her mother’s posse.

‘That’s a little strange, isn’t it?’ comments Morgan. ‘Guy’s running for President, and yet he doesn’t even head his own clan.’

‘That would be a conflict of interest, though,’ Rossi points out, eyes focused on the document. ‘By being a low-level member of a neutral clan, he stands to gain the support of other clans, and humans alike.’

Emily scoffs. Neutral clan, her ass. On paper, maybe – and towards other vampire clans – but practically speaking, they’re as ruthless and selfish as any non-neutrals. That’s politics at work.

They add the Senator to their “persons of interest” list, and keep on reading.

*          *          *

It’s almost three when they stop. There are limitations on the amount of weaponry they’re allowed to take into a clan house; limitations on both number and type. The Prentiss clan is registered neutral, so they’re limited to one stake gun, and half a dozen tranq darts filled with holy water. They’ve all got their service weapons, and Rossi has his field staff as well, but that’s mostly for show.

Two hours later, they’re waiting on transportation, and Morgan notices that Emily’s pacing again. It doesn’t take a profiler to know that she doesn’t want to do this. She’ll never admit it, and she’ll make her presence known, but she’s definitely not going to enjoy the night.

That makes six of them.


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter Twenty-Six

Emily’s feeling a little apprehensive as they approach the residence of the Prentiss clan. It’s a castle, really, but she doesn’t like to call it that, because it brings back some pretty unwelcome memories.

Apprehensive is a bit of an understatement, she thinks, upon consideration of the matter. In actual fact, she’s as nervous as hell. If her heart beat the way it’s supposed to, it’d be pounding away like a jackhammer. As it stands, though, some elements of vampire physiology are a bit of a mystery, and have been the subject of many a Ph. D thesis. No-one claims to even come close to fully understanding it. Not even the vampires.

She’s breathing deeply, trying to relax herself. It’s not working. She’s not entirely sure she isn’t going to end up dead tonight. Or worse than dead – kept alive as a spectacle. As a warning for other vampires that might choose to stray from the path.

‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ says Rossi evenly from the driver’s seat. She’s not even going to ask how he knows – it’s painfully obvious. ‘We’re going on a legally sanctioned interview. Paperwork has been filed. People know where we are. They aren’t going to run the risk of losing their neutral status.’

Emily doesn’t feel the urge to bring up the fact that the same thing had happened just months ago, and Hotch had ended up in ICU. It doesn’t matter who knows where they are. If the power’s in the right place, her mother can get away with almost anything.

It is _not_ a comforting thought.   

The thought of being armed doesn’t seem to help. She has the gun strapped to her hip, but the bullets won’t do more than slow a vampire down, and even then, she’s only got one clip. Hotch has the stake gun, and JJ’s got the tranq darts, and that’s mostly due to the fact that no-one quite trusts Morgan with a weapon that’s capable of killing the people they’re trying to investigate. No-one will admit that that is the reason, though.

‘My mother killed my father,’ she reveals suddenly. In the back seat, Morgan makes the smallest sound of surprise. ‘He was a sorcerer, before she turned him. She didn’t know the consequences of her actions – didn’t know that a hybrid could never truly be one or the other. He couldn’t be the vampire she wanted him to be.’

‘And you’re the only part of him left,’ concludes Rossi.

‘Not only that…I have the part of him that couldn’t stop being human. An aberration in all senses of the word.’

She doesn’t know why she’s telling them this. She’s only known them for a little over twenty-four hours, and she isn’t the most trusting person by any means, but she feels that there’s something deeper at play. That these people are more than just temporary fixtures in her life. She’s never felt this before, and it’s highly disconcerting.

Emily steps out of the SUV, taking in the view of the castle. In the time that she’s lived in this city, she’s tried to stay as far away as possible. Now she’s walking straight into it. A moth to the flame.

Hotch takes the lead, solidifying his status as the team leader. They’re parked on the street, not wanting the vehicles to be trapped behind the twenty foot stone walls should things go south.

There are three men standing at the gate; two of them are guards, and the third is wearing a dark suit. He introduces himself as Diego, the clan liaison. Emily’s never met him, but she has no doubt that he’s been briefed of her existence. Sure enough, he casts a glance over the group, his eyes locking with hers for just one second.

The success of the visit is based on the assumption that there’s going to be a policy of mutual denial. Her mother is going to deny her presence, going to deny that she had attempted to kill Aaron Hotchner, and similarly, the team is going to deny that there’s anything at all wrong, aside from the fourteen werewolves whose deaths they’re investigating. Emily thinks it should work – that’s how her mother plays the game, after all. Publicly polite, privately ruthless.

It’s a hell of an assumption, but they’re not going to get their information any other way.

They’re led through the gate, and towards the doors of the castle. Not all of the clan live here; it’s usually just the clan leader, the most highly regarded associates, and the serving staff. In any case, they’re required by law to ask the clan leader’s permission before interviewing any witnesses. With LaMontagne, it had been different; he had been engaged in the committing of crimes, and thus had waived those particular legal rights.

They’re led through the doors, into a sitting room of sorts. It’s big, and decorative, and from the way JJ’s clenching her fist, Emily knows that this is where she and Hotch had been attacked the last time around.

There’s a woman sitting on the sofa – a woman who is _not_ Elizabeth Prentiss.

‘We requested to speak with the clan leader,’ Hotch told the liaison, his eyes narrowing into a glare.

‘I regret that the Lady Elizabeth is otherwise engaged,’ he says, his own gaze locking with Hotch’s.

‘The _Lady Elizabeth_,’ seethes Hotch, ‘is wanted for questioning in relation to the deaths of fourteen werewolves. We’ve announced our presence; she is required by law to be present, if only to request our departure.’

‘Our lawyers will contest that,’ announces the woman on the sofa; her physiological symptoms are characteristic of someone who’s had a little too much blood. If things reach breaking point, they’ll have a hell of a fight on their hands.

Thirty seconds later, Emily finds herself talking, and she has no idea why. ‘Tell the Lady Elizabeth that her daughter wants to see her,’ she says, and she sees the look on Hotch’s face, and wonders if she’s just screwed things up for all of them.


	27. Chapter 27

They’re all but forced onto the extravagant looking sofas as the liaison leaves the room. The woman had remained behind, and she’s eying them cautiously, as if Emily’s quasi-outburst had thrown her expectations, and she’s not quite sure what’s going to happen next.

She’s not the only one who had been shocked by the event. Hotch has a stoic look on his face, as if he’s doing his very best not to chew Emily out for her reckless behavior, no pun intended. She’ll deal with that later.

First order of business is to get out of this one alive.

It feels like a lifetime before the door reopens, and in all honesty, Emily would have preferred that it had been a lifetime.

She’d seen her mother last in France, almost twenty years prior. In lieu of any other option, she had run like hell, not even waiting for the elder vampire to give the kill order.

Emily finds herself sitting up straight, as though a rod has been jammed down her spine. Beside her, both Morgan and Hotch have tensed, Reid is looking apprehensive, JJ’s brow is furrowed, and Rossi is being Rossi.

The Lady Elizabeth steps in, a dominating regal force. On first glance, she doesn’t seem particularly evil, as such, but then the little things become more and more evident. The sharp gaze, the tightly wound hair. The way she moves her hands. She doesn’t need fangs to kill anyone.

She stops, six feet from the couch, and it’s evident that Hotch and Morgan are irritated by the power imbalance in play.

‘Stand,’ she says; it’s not a request, it’s an order, and she isn’t talking to the rest of the team. She’s talking to Emily.

Emily stands, stepping forward, and then curses herself silently for doing so. It’s difficult to resist the trance of a thousand-year-old vampire, even if it is her mother.

‘Leave us,’ Elizabeth barks, and both the liaison and the woman on the sofa make their hurried departures. It’s just the clan leader, and the team.

‘Open your mouth.’

Emily finds herself being grabbed by the chin and given a cursory inspection of the oral cavity. Elizabeth makes a small sound of distaste.

‘Rat?’

Emily nods, a movement made more difficult than it’s supposed to by the strong grip on her jaw.

‘Oh, Emeline.’ Emily flinches involuntarily. She hasn’t been called that in a long time. That name is associated with another point in her life altogether. ‘How long has it been?’

‘Six hundred years.’

She hears a short intake of breath from behind her, but doesn’t turn to see who it is – Morgan, she thinks.

Her mother’s hand brushes her cheek. Emily tries not to shudder at the touch. ‘You’re selling yourself short, Emily.’ As much as it had made her uncomfortable to hear her old name, it’s even worse to hear her mother use this one, even if one is just a shortened version of the other.

‘I’ll live my life my way, mother,’ she says coldly, stepping back.

‘More’s the pity,’ Elizabeth replies in a similar tone. She sets her narrow gaze upon the rest of the team, and Emily has the vaguest thought that if she lingers on Hotch’s glare for too long, then there might be some kind of explosion.

‘I assume you didn’t come here to meet and greet,’ she asks, as Emily sits back down, ignoring the questioning look from Morgan.

‘Fourteen werewolves are dead. Murdered.’ Hotch takes the lead, and it’s obvious he’s going to great pains not to let his anger out. That could be far more terrifying than Emily’s irresponsible behavior. ‘Last night, one of your vampires returned to the most recent crime scene, attacking the two agents that were there.’ His eyes quickly dart towards Emily, and she bites back a curse.

‘Are you alright, Emeline?’

‘I’m fine, mother,’ she grits, not happy with how this is playing out.

‘Which vampire?’Elizabeth demands. ‘I’ll have him killed.’

‘The vampire in question is in FBI custody,’ Hotch counters, with, if it were possible, even more intensity in his voice. ‘He will go through the proper judicial processes, and will be tried by a court of law. But the fact remains that he did not commit these murders.’

‘Yet he confessed to them.’

‘The vampire in question,’ says Hotch, purposefully, Emily notices, avoiding any used of the vampire’s name, ‘Was under the influence of spell bands. As I understand, your clan is fervently against the use of magic in that way.’

Emily closes her eyes, hearing her father’s screams. His pleas for mercy. No amount of false atonement will make up for that.

‘We prefer to use our powers in other ways,’ Elizabeth says shortly, the implication of the words ringing clear as day. ‘If you need permission to interview the members of my clan, then you have it. But I assure you, none of them are responsible for this crime.’

Hotch hands her the form, the vampire signing neatly on the appropriate line. The FBI now has permission to question any member of the clan in matters pertaining to the crime they’re investigating. It’s what they had come for.

‘If that’s all…’ says Elizabeth. ‘I wish you luck in your investigation. Diego will escort you out.’

And for a moment, Emily thinks that it’s over. That they had gotten through it without any hostility, any bloodshed.

Not quite.

‘Emily.’ Her mother’s voice is forceful. Commanding. ‘You’re going to stay here. With me.’ Again, it’s not a request. It’s an order.

Emily opens her mouth, about to retort with an expletive-laden reason as to why she most certainly isn’t going to be staying behind. She’s frozen in place though; can’t move, can’t talk.

Behind her, she hears Morgan drawing his weapon.

_Shit._

‘Like hell,’ the werewolf growls.

She looks into her mother’s eyes; sees the pupils dilating, sees the blinks coming a little faster. The fangs lengthen.

_Oh shit._

‘Get out of here,’ she finds herself yelling. None of them have the capacity to take on one of the Fallen. They’ll be dead within a second, even armed.

Before they can go anywhere, though, the doors slam shut.

They’re trapped.


	28. Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

There’s a quick flurry of movement as the team shift to the offensive. Morgan pulls his gun, drawing a bead on the vampire’s chest.

‘Let them go,’ says Emily forcefully. ‘They aren’t a part of this.’

‘Either all of us go, or none of us go,’ counters Hotch. Out of the corner of his eye, Morgan can see that the Unit Chief has drawn the stake gun, the weapon similarly leveled at the heart.

‘My daughter doesn’t belong in your world.’ Elizabeth’s voice is angry, yet she remains still to the point where Morgan can’t tell if she’s about to make a move or not. ‘She’s one of us, even if she doesn’t want to believe it.’

‘I think that’s her choice to make.’ Rossi has his staff out, the tip glowing dangerously orange.

‘Guys…’ warns Emily. She looks back briefly, staring at each of them in turn. Morgan shakes his head slightly when their eyes lock. He isn’t going anywhere. ‘Please don’t do this, Mother.’ It’s not a plea. She isn’t begging. It’s their last hope, and, as Morgan had expected, it fails.

Elizabeth Prentiss isn’t backing down.

He can smell other vampires, moving closer by the second. A door swings open, and suddenly the room’s occupants have doubled. They’re surrounded. It’s either fight or die.

He sure as hell doesn’t want to die.

He tries to tap into the earth’s power. Tries to let his body shift into its wolf form. It should be a simple process this close to the full moon, but he isn’t shifting. They’re in a vampire house, he remembers. There are safeguards against werewolves. Non-magical safeguards, but safeguards nonetheless.

Part of him already knows that it’s going to be one hell of a one-sided battle.

Emily’s mother makes the first move, charging her daughter with such speed that even Morgan’s perceptive senses perceive it as a blur.

The vampires that are bearing down on them from the right aren’t as fast, and Morgan manages to get a couple of shots off before they tackle him to the ground. He can tell by looking at their eyes that they aren’t jacked up on blood, which means he has something of a fighting chance.

Two strangled screams in quick succession let him know that Hotch has managed to make two kills with the stake gun. A brief glance to the left tells him that the Unit Chief had managed to hit the Elizabeth with at least one stake, but now the fight between the two vampires is too fast, too brutal for him to try again. He can tell that Emily’s losing badly, which isn’t a surprise, considering that her mother is one of the Fallen. Part of him wants to go help, but first he has to deal with the more immediate threat of the two vampires that are trying to kill him.

They’re not particularly old; he gathers that they’re here to serve the drinks, rather than for any political purpose.

With a bit of leverage, he manages to push himself upwards, taking both the bloodsuckers by surprise. He punches the first one, hearing the satisfying crack as the jaw breaks. There’s no stake within reach, so he satisfies himself with kicking the vampire in the ribs, hard, hoping that it’s enough to keep it down while he deals with the other one.

The second one’s a little stronger, and Morgan takes a few hits himself before both he and the vamp are stunned by a flash of light. Sunlight, Morgan realizes, as the creature explodes into dust before his eyes.

Rossi.

The wizard had evidently come to the realization that most of the vampires in the room were not going to be as impervious to sunlight as Emily and her mother. A dozen or so piles of ashes are scattered about the room.

Morgan pulls himself up just in time to see Elizabeth slam her daughter into the wall. She laughs – a malicious laugh, with no hint of warmth – and he comes to the sudden realization that she’s just toying with them. She could kill them all in an instant.

The clan leader steps away from the wall with such elegance that she might have been at a formal ball, rather than caught up in a brutal battle. Emily slides to the floor; she’s still conscious, but she doesn’t get up.

The battle is lost. Coming here had been a bad idea. The only option, yes, but still a bad one.

‘You think you can win,’ she croons, voice dripping with an unfettered arrogance. ‘Don’t you know that you’ve already lost this world? The werewolf who wishes he was anything but. The psychic that can’t even control her powers. The has-been wizard. The _human_.’ She pauses, her eyes falling on Reid.

Morgan’s heart skips a beat. Elizabeth’s smile widens.

‘The clockwork boy whose friends can’t find it in them to tell him the truth.’

There’s a second of silence. It seems so long, so painful. Morgan watches as Reid’s expression twists into a mixture of shock and confusion.

‘Listen to yourself, Doctor Reid. Can you feel your heart beating?’

Not caring about the consequences, he finds himself charging the vampire. He screeches to a stop, strange words falling upon his ears. His body wants to fight it, but his mind knows that he can’t.

_‘Sleep.’_

The last thing he hears is that malicious laugh all over again.


	29. Chapter 29

The rest of the team is taken from the room, and there’s nothing Emily can do about it. She vaguely recalls hearing her mother giving orders as to which cells – this place has _cells?_ – they’re to be put in, but her head had been ringing too much to notice more than that. Unconsciousness had come quickly after that.

She doesn’t know how long it’s been. She’s on her knees, hands cuffed in front of her. It’s intended to be a position of humiliation, but Emily’s been in far worse situations to be affected by her mother’s attempts at dominance.

‘They’re all going to die, Emeline.’ Her mother’s pacing, not a hair out of place. Emily feels a little miffed that she had done that little damage. She knows she can’t kill the elder vampire – not without adequate preparation – but it would be nice to see a couple of bruises, maybe some blood.

‘Go to hell,’ she spits, with as much venom as she can muster. It’s not much; she’s getting weaker by the second. She needs blood – something which is not in short supply at the castle – but she’s sure as hell not going to accept any drinks.

‘The psychic will die first. I’ll slit her throat, and they’ll ravage her like vultures. You can all watch. Do you think Agent Hotchner will cry? She is his whore, after all, isn’t she?’

Emily closes her eyes against the anger. She needs to focus on keeping it all locked away. No fear. No anger. No pain.

_You’re going to die._

Shut up.

_Seven hundred years, and she’s finally going to kill you_.

Shut up!

‘I’ll kill the wizard next; his blood is poison. I won’t let it touch their lips. But you can watch him scream as his insides boil. Your little robot friend…I think we might let him go slowly insane. Hotchner…I’ll take care of him myself – his blood is so sweet.’ She licks her lips.

‘Take her away,’ she barks. ‘With the ‘wolf.’

It’s only with the mention of Morgan that Emily realizes that her mother hadn’t mentioned what she is going to do to him.

*          *          *

He wakes up, and he’s chained to the wall. It’s not just a cuff around the ankle; he’s strung up, arms and legs spread wide. They’re coated with silver, and he can feel his flesh slowly burning away. Someone has stripped him to his boxers, and he feels the cold night air coming in through the tiny, barred window.

What had happened?

_Sleep_.

The vampire bitch had said that, hadn’t she? Sleep. He remembers the word as magic, but it doesn’t make sense. Vampires don’t use sorcerer magic, least of all these vampires.

Blood magic.

It’s rare amongst vamps; only really found in the oldest. The most powerful. It makes perfect sense to think that Elizabeth Prentiss is one of _those_ vampires.

He doesn’t even want to think about what she has planned for the team.

It’s at that point that he realizes he isn’t alone.

There’s a vampire in the room. Not Emily. Not her mother. It’s a male vampire. He smells like blood.

The vamp moves a little closer, stepping into the moonlight that’s shining through the window. Morgan can see from looking at his eyes that he’s jacked up on human blood. There’s a knife in his hand – not silver – which means he isn’t going to die just yet.

He tries not to think about the impending pain. Tries to think about something else.

The knife slides into his abdomen, and he can’t help but groan in pain. He can feel the blood trickling down already, staining his boxers. It’s not a kill wound.

‘What the fuck do you want?’ he seethes. The vampire ignores him, making another incision – this time a little higher up. This close to the full moon, the wounds should be healing already, but they’re not. The blood pumps out slowly, glinting in the low light.

Why is he not healing?

Is it something to do with why he couldn’t – can’t – shift in here? Is it that blood magic? He hasn’t had enough experience with the different types of magic to accurately answer that. He’s heard rumors of shifter magic – magic relying on the manipulation of elements – but then there aren’t many lycanthropes old enough to use it. The life span is similar to a vampire’s, but for some reason they tend not to live as long.

It could be the fact that most vampires are out to kill them. That, and the blatant power inequity. Theoretically speaking, vampires could be blood-frenzied twenty-four seven, while a shifter has his peak just one day out of thirty. All that considered, he’d still rather be a wolf.

Well…all in all, he’d rather be human, but that isn’t going to happen any time soon.

*          *          *

The cell door opens, and she’s dumped unceremoniously to the floor. She hears a laugh, and the footsteps of someone walking past her, but she doesn’t look up. The metallic scent of blood – werewolf blood – hits her nostrils with a ferocious intensity.

Morgan.

The door slams shut, but she’s isn’t paying attention to that. She’s paying attention to the half naked man that’s chained to the wall, bleeding to death.

She hears a short laugh outside the cell, but ignores it.

She scrambles towards him, and she’s not four feet away when it hits her. Blood. It’s not just in her nostrils now, it’s overpowering every sense. Overpowering every facet of her being.

_This_ is what her mother wants done to Morgan. He isn’t going to be killed by a lackey. She wants _Emily _to kill him.

A flash of red.

A voice, screaming.

Blood.

A man whose life she had destroyed.

She steps forward, shaking. She knows she’s not in control of her own actions, and yet she can’t stop it. Morgan’s conscious – he’s looking at her. Looking into her eyes.

She touches his chest, letting the blood slick past her fingers.

Red.

Screaming.

Blood.


	30. Chapter 30

Reid sits in the corner of the cell, refusing to face any other member of the team. No, Rossi corrects himself; it’s not the whole team, it’s only half the team. They’d heard Morgan’s cries of pain, but not even JJ could properly determine what the vampires had been doing to him. Emily, unsurprisingly, is also missing, and Rossi is painfully aware of the fact that she’s the one on whom Elizabeth Prentiss will be focused.

‘What do we think?’ he asks Hotch and JJ quietly. They’re sitting against the wall, in a position that suggests a little more than just professional closeness.

‘We’re not going to be using physical strength to get out of this one,’ Hotch says, eyes flickering from the door to the window.

Rossi nods. The only ones who might even be remotely capable of getting them out of here with physical force are conveniently missing. If they hadn’t taken his staff from him, he knows that he could have blasted the door open easily. As it stands, though, he can’t quite dredge up enough power for a fireball. It’s not just lack of energy – there’s some kind of barrier stopping him.

 ‘We need a plan,’ JJ says firmly, glancing towards Reid. He’s the go-to person for plans. Like a chessmaster, he sees the right moves laid out before his eyes. Right now, though, he isn’t talking to any of them. And with good reason. They’d lied to him – for his own wellbeing, but it had been a lie nonetheless. Indeed, it’s a testament to his humanity that he feels so strongly about the situation.

‘To get _all_ of us out,’ Rossi reiterates, with more resolve than the first time he’d said it. After all, now they’re actually imprisoned, instead of just under threat of imprisonment. JJ gives him a dirty look, as if insulted that he’d think she meant any differently.

‘We know they have no qualms about killing,’ says Hotch, and both he and JJ give pained expressions. They’re all too familiar with the practices of the Prentiss clan. ‘And they have the political capacity to get away with killing six FBI agents.’ There’s anger in Hotch’s voice; he hates politics just as much as the rest of them, even if it is a part of his job description.

JJ shakes her head slightly.

It looks bad, Rossi knows, and even with all their luck in the past, he doesn’t know if they’re going to make it out of this one alive.

*          *          *

Morgan doesn’t take his eyes off of Emily.

She’s close.

She’s so close.

He can hear her heavy breaths; see the dilated pupils, the lengthened fangs. She runs a finger along his chest. He sucks in air.

‘Emily…’ It hurts to breathe. Hurts to talk.

She puts an arm around his neck, drawing herself closer. Her breasts press up against his chest. She doesn’t say anything. Just breathes.

Finally, she whispers – so softly – ‘Do you trust me?’

His own breath catches in his throat. ‘Emily, I…’ He stops, unsure of what to say.

Her other hand moves behind him, rubbing against the fabric of his boxers. She kisses his cheek – one of the only places on his body where he isn’t bleeding.

‘I can get us out of here,’ she tells him, voice still as low as possible. ‘But only if you trust me.’

Does he trust her?

It’s a difficult question.

Yes, she saved his life, but he’s only known her a day, and she doesn’t exactly have the best relatives.

Not to mention that he’s fairly sure whatever she does to get them out of there isn’t going to be pretty.

He’d be a lot more hesitant about saying yes if it wasn’t for the rest of the team, imprisoned somewhere else in the castle. At least, he thinks they’re still incarcerated. For all he knows, they could be dead. But this is his only chance.

‘Yes,’ he croaks, even though he’s not entirely sure that he means it. ‘Yes, I trust you.’

She slides down his torso, arms snaking his abdomen. She licks the blood from his pectorals, and he finds himself shivering. The licking is interspersed with kisses, and he’s not quite sure if it’s just a show for the guards, or if she’s just getting caught up in the moment. He feels his body beginning to react to her touch.

It doesn’t take long for every drop to be lapped up, and she pushes against him once more as she rises. He catches a glimpse of her eyes – it almost looks as though there’s a golden tinge to them – before her mouth goes to his neck, her hand back down towards his boxers. She bites. Not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough for him to feel it in amongst the other nerves that are screaming at him.

‘Emily…’ he says again, and she jerks away with short gasp. She similarly pulls her hand away from where it had been exploring the insides of his boxers.

‘I’m sorry,’ she breathes. Her voice is a lot less composed than it has been at any point over the last day and a half. Even bleeding to death, she had held herself together better. He wonders if trusting her had been a mistake.

After all, vamps are vamps.

She steps back, the speed of her breaths increasing. She gives him a tiny smile before turning back towards the door. She considers it for a moment, before ripping away with little effort.

Blood.

Son of a bitch.

The two guards lunge for her, and she dispatches them with even less effort than it took to open the door. It’s violent. Inelegant. Their bodies slam against the concrete, and he can hear the crack of bones breaking.

She stalks back in, ripping his chains from the wall. Her eyes are a golden yellow, now, and her breathing is erratic. This isn’t the usual reaction that vampires have to drinking human blood. Usually it’s an increased strength without that lack of control.

Right now, Emily looks almost feral.

He doesn’t have much of a chance to dwell on that fact, because she’s already put his arm around her shoulder, and they’re on their way.


	31. Chapter 31

The rest of the team is in a cell not far from where they are. There’s a quick scuffle as the guards are dispatched, and Emily can feel her heart beating unnaturally fast, even though she hasn’t really done anything particularly strenuous. The guards had been a cakewalk, which in itself is strange. It’s been so long since she’s had human blood that she can’t even remember how she’s supposed to be feeling. All she remembers is the consequences.

JJ and Hotch are out first, while Rossi tries to coax Reid from his corner of the cell. She feels a burst of sympathy. She knows what it’s like trying to be something you’re not, only in her case, it’s intentional. Judging by the near catatonic state of Reid, he’s taking the news exceptionally hard.

‘I don’t want to go with you!’ he yells, and Emily notices JJ looking down the dark hallway nervously, as if someone might have heard the noise. ‘You lied to me.’

‘Reid.’ Rossi kneels beside him, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. His voice is soft. Comforting. ‘Reid, listen to me. I don’t have the answers you’re looking for. But once we get out of here, I will do my very best to make sure that you find out what you need to know. But for now, we need to get out of here.’

There’s a few seconds of pained silence before Reid nods slowly and gets to his feet. JJ breathes a small sigh of relief.

‘So how are we getting out of here?’ asks Morgan in a pained voice. Emily finds her grip on him slipping. There’s adrenaline pumping through her system. Far too much adrenaline. She’s never felt this alert, and quite frankly, it’s kind of terrifying. She tries to push it away, but instead, it only grows stronger.

‘Emily?’

She shakes her head, though what she’s shaking her head _to_, she isn’t quite sure. ‘I can’t,’ she breathes. Then, a little louder. ‘I can’t.’

Hotch catches Morgan as he falls from her, and she finds herself trying to find purchase on the wall, fingernails digging into the rough bricks. She feels like she’s about to explode.

Wolves and vampires don’t mix. It’s not just cultural, it’s biological. She’s got wolf in her system, and her body just doesn’t know how to deal with it. It’s compensating.

 ‘How much did you drink?’

She can’t quite tell who’s talking. Things are starting go blurry, and she’s seconds away from breaking through the barriers, and letting the aggression out. She wants to fight. To kill. And she doesn’t know why.

‘Please…’ she manages, vaguely aware of the fact that she’s started to cry. Why, she’s not sure. She isn’t sad, isn’t in pain, as such. It could be that biology thing again, but she just doesn’t know.

She fights the confusion. Clears her mind. ‘We need to get out of here,’ says Rossi urgently. ‘We’re dead if they find out we’ve escaped.’

Emily wants to agree, but her mind can’t form the words. She concentrates on breathing, on staying stable. On not losing control. She’s had some practice at it, after all. Whether it’s because of this concentration, or because of something else, she doesn’t know, but her body seems to grant her a brief reprieve.

She watches with interest as JJ – with some hesitation – probes the mind of the unconscious guards. It’s possible that they might know some alternate way out of the castle; a secret passage in case of attack, or a servant’s entrance. It’s a fairly old building.

Evidently, the psychic does find something, because she leads them down the hallway, away from the main castle.

They traverse the dark passageway, Emily occasionally gripping Rossi’s arm to stop herself from falling. In more ways than one.

The tunnel isn’t a long one, but it’s long enough. Emily has enough of her senses intact to know that they’re going south, which will probably put them outside the boundaries of the city, into the surrounding woodland. Woodland that’s filled with rogue wolves. There’re probably barriers in place that are keeping the wolves at bay, so to speak, but once they pass those barriers, then they’ll have to be on the lookout.

The good news, though, is that once outside those boundaries, Morgan will start to heal. The bad news is, by the same principles, Emily’ll probably lose control ten times faster. She’s not exactly looking forward to that.

They know what they have to do.

For a group of people that are as wary of vampires as them, it shouldn’t be too hard to kill her.


	32. Chapter 32

The moment he steps into the cool night air, he can feel himself growing stronger. He can feel the gashes on his body beginning to stitch themselves back together. Can feel his bone marrow replenishing the blood that had been spilled. The moon, partially hidden by the trees, is near full, which means the healing process is much quicker than any other night of the month, save one.

With the pain ebbing away, he becomes suddenly aware of the fact that he’s standing around in his boxer shorts. That doesn’t seem too important, though, when he realizes that, while being outside the castle makes him stronger, it’s not going to do any amount of good for the person who’s just ingested a great deal of his blood.

Rossi’s holding her up, but she doesn’t need it, because weakness isn’t her problem right now. It’s control.

And it’s slipping.

He stares into her eyes, and she stares back, only they’re not really her eyes that he’s staring into. They’re still that golden yellow color, and now he can see the animal behind them that’s just waiting to strike out.

Different types of magic do not mix well. Not in this way.

She pulls out of Rossi’s grasp violently, her limbs tucked in rigidly, as if it’s a conscious effort not to lash out, and it is.

‘Get out of here.’ There’s a lot Morgan can tell from those words. There’s fear. Pain. Anger. It’s not the first time she’s wanted them to leave her behind tonight. The first time had been very, _very_ different, and yet to Emily it’s probably exactly the same.

She’s afraid of turning into her mother. Afraid of being the heartless, soulless monster that wants to kill them. He wants nothing more than to hold her, to tell her that she isn’t anything like her mother, that she’s so much better. If he held her now, though, she’d rip his throat out.

‘She’s right,’ Morgan says, his eyes not leaving hers. ‘You need to leave.’ He knows that even with still-healing injuries, he’s the only one that stands a chance of subduing her in this state. That’s not an ego thing; it’s fact. Hotch, Reid and JJ would be dead in seconds, and without his staff, Rossi’s options are limited.

‘We can’t just go back to the SUVs and pretend they’re not watching,’ argues Rossi.

‘Well it’s either that, or hang around while a feral vampire burns off some energy,’ he retorts angrily, and he almost regrets it, head snapping back towards Emily to see her reaction. She isn’t exactly paying attention, a fact which he simultaneously laments and is grateful for. She hadn’t heard his slip of the tongue, but she’s also that much closer to a violent outburst.

For a moment, it almost looks as though there’s going to be some kind of argument, but the tension is sliced open violently when Morgan finds himself being tackled to the ground by the aforementioned feral vampire. Having expected this, he rolls with the tackle, the leaves and sticks of the forest floor scratching against his bare back.

‘GO!’ he yells, and doesn’t wait to see if they take his advice.

She’s snarling, fangs at their full length now – almost an inch. She swipes at him, and he ducks with ease. He’s glad more than ever of his martial arts experience, because he definitely doesn’t want to be turning right now. With her in this state, he knows he’s out-matched. Tomorrow night, in his wolf form, would be a different story. Right now, though, he doesn’t need to overpower her. He doesn’t want to kill her, or maim her, he just needs to wear her down long enough for the blood to get used up. If he turns, then he won’t be in control, and control is definitely something that they’re in need of right now.

That’s not to mention the fact that if he bites her, then they’re both screwed. Magic works in balance. Her drinking his blood had upset that balance, if only temporarily. If he bites her, then there’ll be permanent changes on both sides of the table. Hybridism isn’t the most ideal state to be in.

He takes each blow as it comes, not dealing any in return. It’s not about offense, it’s about defense, and over the years, Derek Morgan has built up some pretty solid defenses. Not just physical defenses, but that’s a matter for another time.

He’s breathing heavily when he regains the advantage, pressing his body weight into her. It’s enough to make her hesitate, but it won’t hold her for long. Her eyes look a little darker. A little more human. She lets out a small sound, as if she’s trying to say something, but it only lasts a moment, and then they’re back to tussling in the woody understory. She slams him up against a tree, which hurts like hell, but it’s not a pain he hasn’t felt before.

He gets to his feet, vaguely aware of howling in the distance. ‘Emily…’ He tries saying her name, as though it might break through the slowly cracking haze. It doesn’t. She tries to grab at him, but he uses the move to his advantage, and swiftly pins her against the tree. ‘Emily,’ he tries again, a little more softly. He can see the haze starting to clear. The gold is gone from her eyes, only to be replaced by tears.

‘…Morgan?’ It’s almost a whimper, because – if the terse conversation with her mother in the castle is anything to indicate – then she’s just done something that she’s spent the last six hundred years trying not to do. ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry. Please…I…’ She stops, lost for words, and he finds himself compensating for the silence by leaning in and kissing her slowly. Gently.

‘It’s okay,’ he says, his voice quiet, his thumb brushing the tear from her cheek. ‘It’s okay.’


	33. Chapter 33

He holds her close with one arm, letting his free hand trace her jawline. The tears have stopped, salty drops still clinging to closed eyelashes. He kisses her again, and he can taste the salt, though it’s just as likely from the sweat of their brawl as it is from the tears.

‘Morgan…’ she breathes as they part, pulling her lips away with a slight whimper. ‘I can’t…’

_I_ can’t. Not _we_ can’t.

‘Tell me you don’t want this,’ he says huskily. While she had pulled away from the kiss, she isn’t trying to escape his grasp.

‘I just tried to kill you,’ she chokes out. ‘Doesn’t that _bother_ you?’

‘You also saved my life last night. And you got us out of the castle,’ he counters. ‘I’d say you’ve broken even.’

She shakes her head, the movement brushing her hair across his shoulders. ‘I don’t mean just tonight. I mean doesn’t it bother you that I could snap at any time. That I could taste one drop of human blood and then you’d have to deal with me all over again.’ She gives him a pained look. ‘You should just kill me now.’

And then everything becomes so much clearer. It all adds up. She’s terrified of losing control. And she’d done exactly that to get them out of there alive.

‘Emily,’ he says, forcefully, but gently at the same time. ‘Listen to me. Nobody is going to be killing anybody. We’re not going to sit around and let you go through this alone. You’re part of the team now.’ Only it’s not just the team that she’s a part of. She’s a part of the hodge-podge family that’s been forged through late nights and bad coffee. Part of him thinks that he shouldn’t trust her just yet; that in spite of the events of the past few days, she is still, ultimately, one of them. It’s the same thought he’d had not half an hour ago, with her body pressed up against his in the small, dark cell. Right now, he can’t bring himself to see her as the enemy, even if she did technically just try to kill him.

He knows that she doesn’t really feel like she belongs, and in a way, it’s true. She hasn’t been around that long, and while she’s certainly made an impression, it’s going to take a lot more before _she_ actually considers herself a part of the family.

She leans forward slightly, her lips parting. He takes the invitation with gusto, their mouths crashing together with a little more need than the first time. He feels her hands slipping down his torso, and realizes for the first time that she had destroyed his boxers in the heat of battle. He’s standing naked in the middle of a forest, making out with a vampire. If anyone had revealed to him this part of his future, he would have been insulted.

They’re interrupted by the sound of heavy feet crunching across the forest floor. Their retreat is a little hastier this time, as they both move into offensive stances. It takes Morgan less than a second to jump from that offensive stance, to one that provides a little more security to his more delicate body parts.

‘I came to see if you’d killed each other yet,’ Rossi says in an amused tone. ‘If I’d known, I probably would have stayed behind and let you get on with it.’

Morgan says nothing, but under the moonlight, he knows he’s flushed with a little more than just adrenaline.

Rossi slips off his long Nehru jacket, and tosses it to Morgan without another word. He shrugs it on, buttoning as quickly as his fingers will allow him. The jacket hits him at about knee height; not enough to ward off the night chill, but enough to cover the essentials.

‘Thanks,’ he says, hugging the jacket a little tighter. It’s a reminder that they need to get out of the forest – get back to civilization. It’s not just the temperature, it’s the multitude of other things that could go wrong. The vampires could come looking for them. They could run into some rogue wolves. Usually the ‘wolves don’t hang this close to the city, but he really doesn’t want to be putting that theory to the test on tonight of all nights.

They make their way back to the rest of the team, and Morgan notices that Emily’s hanging back a little, as if she’s still afraid that they’re going to be judging her. Personally, he thinks that they’ll have a lot more on their minds to be worrying about. Still, he slows down a little, and falls into step with her. It’s a show of solidarity to the team, as much as it is a show of camaraderie to Emily. She gives him a small smile. Briefly, he considers what might have happened had Rossi not interrupted them so timely.

‘Please stop thinking about sex so loudly.’ JJ’s voice comes through the trees as they approach the small clearing. He puts a block on his thoughts, mentally kicking himself.

‘Sorry.’

Emily raises an eyebrow at him, but she doesn’t seem as upset as she had been, which is a major plus.

They congregate in a tight group, and this time it’s Reid who’s standing a little way away, which is completely understandable. They’re a family, and they betrayed him, even if they’d thought it for the best. This isn’t a problem that’s going to be fixed overnight.

‘We need to get back to FBI headquarters,’ says Hotch authoritatively. It’s something they all know, and yet when Hotch says it, the need for action becomes so much more real. ‘We need to get back, and we need to question the members of the Prentiss clan.’ He pulls the sheet of paper from his jacket pocket; the consent form having miraculously survived the encounter with the vampires, which is more than can be said for any weapons or cell phones. Legally speaking, even if Elizabeth Prentiss _had _tried to kill them, they still have the right to question clan members without repercussion.

Morgan looks at his watch. It’s almost three a.m, which means they don’t have much longer until the sun rises. They don’t want to still be hanging around when that happens; while it’ll hold off most of the vampires that want to kill them, it definitely wouldn’t be good for Emily, and quite frankly, he thinks she’s been through enough crap in the past couple of days.

‘If we circle around to the east, we can bypass any patrols in the area,’ suggests Reid, to Morgan’s surprise. ‘We can call Garcia from there,’ he adds.

Hotch nods. The vampire patrols are noticeably less prominent in the more neutral areas of the city. Providing there are no complications, they should be able to make it to some form of shelter before the sun rises.

Then they’ll have a whole ‘nother can of worms to deal with.


	34. Chapter 34

It’s nearing sunrise when they reach the FBI outpost at Lamia, one the eastern boundaries of the city. Emily can see the sun shining out from behind the trees at the edge of the horizon through the tinted glass window. She finds herself suddenly aware of the hunger pangs that are rippling through her, a side effect of the recent blood high. It’s been so long since she’s felt this; she’d almost forgotten.

She sits at the table, head in her hands. Hotch is talking with the outpost SAIC, JJ is calling Garcia, Morgan is getting changed into some clothes that had been scrounged up for him, and Reid and Rossi are sitting at the other end of the table, Reid going to great pains to avoid eye contact. He need time to process the information that he’s been given. Needs time to find out who he really is.

Emily knows how hard that can be.

She jumps slightly, as she feels a hand landing on her shoulder. It’s Morgan, wearing a t-shirt and jeans combo that’s at least two sizes too small. She finds her eyes lingering a little too long in certain areas.

‘Hey,’ he says warmly, directing his words both to her, and to Rossi and Reid. Rossi grunts, while Reid says nothing at all.

‘Hey.’ She gives him a half smile, still kind of unsure about what’s going on between them. She’d tried to kill him last night, and he’d responded by making out with her. If that’s not unusual behavior, then she isn’t sure what is.

‘You hungry?’ he asks, and for a split second, she wonders if he’s assimilated JJ’s powers, but then he adds, ‘I was thinking I could go grab some breakfast for everyone while Hotch and JJ are sorting stuff out. I know I’m starving every time I shift back. Nothing half a dozen steaks don’t fix.’ He tips her a wink, but she feels her stomach roil slightly at the thought of steak.

She shakes her head. ‘No meat. I cannot face meat right now.’ She pauses, thinking. ‘Pancakes. Pancakes would be good. A lot of pancakes. With peanut butter,’ she adds, with the slightest hint of embarrassment. Her post blood cravings aren’t exactly conventional.  She’d equate it to pregnancy cravings, but she’s never been through those, and she’s fairly sure she never will.

He returns almost forty-five minutes later, by which time the sun has fully risen, and Hotch and JJ have joined them at the table. Once they’ve finished breakfast, they’ll take the two of the identical black SUVs in the parking garage, and make their way back to headquarters, where they’ll sort out the complete mess that last night had turned into.

Emily has no doubt that her mother has already found a way out of being held responsible. The only evidence they have is their own memories, and that isn’t nearly enough to take down a woman so powerful.

She sighs as she loads the stack of pancakes onto the plate. There’s a jar of peanut butter sitting at the bottom of the plastic bag, and she can’t help but laugh. Has life always been this ridiculous, or has she just been too blind to see it?

There’s not much talk as they eat. Not much to talk about really, save for the utterly depressing. They’re exhausted as hell, and the investigation seems to be hammering away at their psyches from all sides. It’s only been two days. These people do this near three hundred and sixty-five days a year. She marvels at their strength. Their dedication. She’s spent her whole life running. Whenever things had gotten too tough, she’d dropped it all, and kept on moving. She’s not sure if she has the strength to keep doing this, but she’s damn well going to try.

After a meal that had made even Reid raise half an eyebrow, Emily finds herself retreating from the table somewhat sheepishly. She wanders off in search of a bathroom, to freshen up after the somewhat sweaty nature of last night’s events. She’ll take a shower when they get back to HQ; she wonders just how long the bag of clothes in the trunk of her car is going to last if she keeps having to change with such frequency. She’s not sure how long it’ll be before she gets the chance to put laundry on. For all she knows, she could be dead before she gets the chance.

After washing her face – something, upon consideration, she probably should have done before breakfast – she feels a little bit better, but it’s not enough to quash the feeling that she might have royally screwed up last night’s interview. If not for her antics, they wouldn’t have been captured.

‘Your mother’s a crazy bitch, Emily,’ she reminds herself. ‘She probably would have done something, even if you hadn’t.’

_Talking to yourself now? You’ll go crazy before you get a chance to die._

But then, she’d probably gone crazy a long time ago.


	35. Chapter 35

The moment the team steps off the elevator, there’s a loud buzzing sound, and a white blur that speeds towards them. Garcia’s voice is even more high-pitched than normal, as a result of her concern.

‘She didn’t hurt any of you, did she? I swear I’m going to make that bitch wish she’d never been born. Let’s see her take go on a murderous rampage with a super-low credit rating.’

Morgan raises an eyebrow at the swearing that is somewhat uncharacteristic for the fairy, and almost brings up the fact that without Elizabeth, there would be no Emily, but decides against it. JJ shoots him a look that’s half-amusement, half a reminder for him to think a little quieter. His thoughts about Emily haven’t exactly been the most censored on both sides of the table.

If Emily notices the implications of Garcia’s words, she doesn’t say anything. She gives the fairy a half-smile, and then excuses herself. Her clothes are still covered in his blood; he realizes – not to mention the torn fabric and the abundance of dirt from their tussle in the forest.

The rest of the team makes their way towards the conference room. The quicker they can solve this case, the quicker they’ll be able to go home and get some rest. It’s definitely not going to be smooth sailing, though. For one thing, it’s the full moon tonight. The Sanctuary is still closed off, which means that there will be shapeshifters in their animal form scattered across the city.

That reminds him – he needs to phone the pack alpha to find out just what’s supposed to be happening. It’s highly unlikely that they’ll be allowed to just lock themselves in their homes – not without some form of sedative. Just the thought of that makes Morgan wary. Even without a killer on the loose, he’d much prefer not having his senses dulled in such a manner.

With a nod from Hotch, he slips from the conference room to make the call.

‘_Hey, Derek, what happened? I tried calling you_,’ Andy greets him.

Morgan gives a grim smile, though he knows that the alpha cannot see him. ‘I, uh…there was a work thing. It didn’t end too well. I lost my phone. Listen, what’s happening tonight? Do we have a backup?’

Andy’s voice is filled with frustration as he answers. ‘_No. I spoke to a DHHS rep, who told me that we’re going to have to use spell bands. I’m not so sure how well the magics are going to mix, but right now, it’s either that, or jabbing everyone with a gigantic needle._’

Morgan swears. Spell band _is_ better than the alternative - he’ll at the very least be able to fight back if he’s attacked – but he’d much prefer no sedative at all.

‘_I know, I know. Right now, I’m more worried about getting a hold of some of these shifters. They won’t go down with a band even if you bribed them. Your people are going to have their hands full tonight, I guarantee._’

‘I know,’ he says. ‘And it really doesn’t help that there’s someone out there killing ‘shifters.’

‘_I’ll make sure everyone’s warned,_’ the alpha assures him. ‘_A courier should have brought the band to your office. No less than a half hour before sunset, remember?_’

‘Yeah, I remember.’

They hang up after exchanging the expected pleasantries, and Morgan notices Emily making her way back from the bathrooms. His phone call must have taken longer than he had thought if she’s coming back already.

‘Hey,’ she greets him. She still seems a little distant, and probably will for a while, in spite of anything physical that might have happened between them. He lets his nose take over; while the smell of blood hasn’t completely gone – it’ll take a couple of days for that to happen – it seems diminished. Almost a distant memory.

‘Hey.’ He gives her a smile, which is returned somewhat half-heartedly. She follows just a few steps behind him as they rejoin the team. Though they’re running on little to no sleep, they’re already working diligently. Reid is sitting noticeably apart, as though he is torn between staying to help, or simply leaving altogether. It’s subtle – a behavior that probably would have gone unnoticed by anyone who isn’t trained in such detailed observation.

This case is killing the team as much as it’s killing the victims, he realizes. Two separate attacks, the clan leader revealing Reid’s true nature. Two physical, one mental. Their other cases are dangerous, that’s a given – the violence of this one, though, seems so much more coincidental. As though fate is trying to screw with them. Fate, or someone else entirely.

‘We’re being played,’ he says, to the surprise of the rest of the team. ‘Someone wanted us to go to the castle, knowing we’d be killed.’

Emily narrows her eyes. ‘It’s not my mother. Trust me. She’s a complete cu-…bitch, but she wouldn’t have sent one of her vamps out to kill knowing it would lead straight back to her. She tried to kill us, but she didn’t kill those ‘wolves.’

‘But that doesn’t mean the entire clan is innocent,’ Rossi points out. ‘We still need to question the people on our list.’

‘Which we can’t do until dark,’ adds JJ. ‘And even then, we’ll be down a profiler.’

‘Two profilers,’ counters Hotch, causing everyone to turn back to the Unit Chief in question. It’s Emily that he directs his next words to. ‘I don’t think you should sit in on these interviews,’ he says. She opens her mouth, as if to argue, but Hotch hasn’t finished. ‘It’s not your judgment I don’t trust – it’s theirs. I’d prefer if things didn’t get violent, and your presence seems to…exacerbate some things.’

She doesn’t seem happy at that, but doesn’t deny it either; it’s the truth after all. Morgan puts a hand on her shoulder, and she seems to tighten slightly underneath his touch. It’s Hotch’s next words, however, that throw both of them for a loop.

‘Stay with Morgan tonight.’

‘What?’ she asks, before Morgan can say anything.

‘He’ll be docile; if someone attacks, I’d prefer it if he _wasn’t_ alone.’

Morgan’s not entirely sure they’re killer _isn’t_ beyond attacking them in their homes, but that doesn’t mean he’s happy with this new development.

‘Sitting right here, guys.’ He turns his attention towards Hotch. ‘You know how the bands work; they don’t stop me from fighting back if I’m attacked.’

‘But they _do_ suppress aggression,’ notes Rossi. ‘Not to mention the fact that you’ll have a wolf mind. You won’t be able to strategize; it’ll be pure instinct.’

There’s a moment of silence. He knows that they’re right, but it somehow feels wrong to give in. Feels wrong to admit that he needs protection. But then, he figures, if it’s Emily that’s staying with him, then something good might come of the night after all.


	36. Chapter 36

The day goes much quicker than he anticipated. They’re running down every lead, searching for whoever might be have motive, and just as importantly, who might be capable. It’s something of a conundrum; the vamps are the natural main suspects for killing the wolves, but it’s out of character for them to be framing other vampires. Not only are the Prentiss clan neutral, but they’re indiscriminately intimidating.

The other side of the coin, however, makes just as little sense. The wolves would never kill their own, not even to bring down the vampires. Which means that it isn’t about species. It’s about something else entirely. Unfortunately, the political bullshit is so intermixed with the species thing, that sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s what.

‘Definitely someone with power,’ says Morgan. ‘Or in a powerful group. No way your average guy off the street could’ve pulled this off. But we already knew that.’

‘Garcia, could you check LaMontagne’s finances?’ Hotch directs the fairy, who starts tapping away at the laptop keyboard with her feet.

‘Looks clean on the surface,’ she announces. ‘I’ll run a deeper check. If someone’s paying him, then they’ll be doing it on the d.l.’

Rossi drums his fingers against the table. ‘Why the Prentiss clan?’

‘We have a history with them,’ JJ points out. ‘Once they found out we were the ones taking the case, they could have hired LaMontagne to try and kill Morgan and Emily.’

Hotch nods. ‘We were so focused on taking them down, we didn’t consider the alternatives.’ Morgan can hear the tone in Hotch’s voice; when he says “we,” he doesn’t really mean “we,” he means “I.”  _I_ was so focused on taking them down. _I _didn’t consider the alternatives. He’s blaming himself; something that Morgan is getting fairly used to by now.

‘Are we sure that’s the only reason, though?’ Emily asks, and the question hangs in the air.

No-one knows.

*          *          *

It’s barely noon when Hotch tells her to take Morgan home. She raises an eyebrow at the request.

‘By all rights, you should both be on medical leave after last night. And the night before.’

Morgan’s eyes narrow. ‘Do you remember that time when you came into work two days after major surgery? You could barely walk, and yet you came in telling JJ that she needed to polish her shoes.’

Hotch’s face is completely straight as he counters, ‘Well clearly I was delirious at the time, and you shouldn’t follow my example.’

Stealth humor. Ten points to the Unit Chief.

‘All were doing here is searching through files, looking for a connection.’ There’s strain in Hotch’s voice, and it’s understandable. Clearly he would much prefer if they had a real, tangible lead in the case.

There’s little more argument, because in the end, Hotch is right. They’re both exhausted. She can tell that Morgan wants to press the issue, but he doesn’t. Instead, they gather their belongings, and make their way down to the parking garage. She’s not allowed to set foot in the office until sometime tomorrow, and for Morgan it’s the day after, because having your entire body change so violently isn’t exactly something you can get over quickly.

They take her car, because, while she’s ridden a bike before, she much prefers having her gear at hand should something go down. She’s hoping like hell that nothing does go down, because seriously – she’d like to have at least one night this week where someone isn’t trying to kill her. Or Morgan. Or any of the team, for that matter. But if the team is interviewing vamps tonight, then that may well be a pipe dream.

He directs her towards Bathory, and she finds her interest piqued. He doesn’t live that far from her; there’s only half a dozen blocks between their apartment buildings. It makes sense for him to live in a mixed community; even with the major alpha male vibe he gives off, he is definitely not a wolf in the behavioral sense.

That doesn’t stop him from being almost territorial as they make their way up to his apartment. They might have made some kind of connection, but that doesn’t mean that he’s ready to let her into his home.

She hesitates at the doorway.

‘Do I have to invite you in?’ He says it with a laugh, but it almost seems like a fake laugh, as if he’s suddenly considering not doing so.

‘You know you don’t,’ she frowns. ‘But…I’d prefer it if you did.’ That way, it makes her almost feel as though she’s wanted here, even if she isn’t. It doesn’t help that she’s supposed to be here protecting him. He doesn’t trust, and he doesn’t yield, and here she is making him do both.

There’s a moment of awkward silence.

‘Did you want to get some sleep before I have to ‘shift?’ he asks her. ‘There’s a guest room, but I might have to go searching for the sheets.’

‘I can nap on the couch,’ she suggests, and he relaxes somewhat. She doesn’t want to be putting him out any more than she already is, and clearly finding clean sheets is something of a challenge.

She sets her bag down beside the couch, and almost trips over the edge of the rug. She steadies herself quickly, but Morgan’s just as fast, his hand at her shoulder.

She looks into his eyes. They’re a little more wild now, the influence of the full moon slowly surging into him.

She doesn’t get to take that nap after all.


	37. Chapter 37

He presses her up against the wall, his mouth on her neck. He sucks hungrily, aggressively, and she’s fairly sure that his fingers are going to leave bruises, the way they’re digging into her hips right now.

‘Oh, God, Morgan.’ She can feel him, pulsating, through those too tight jeans. It sends tingles down her spine; the kind of tingles she hasn’t felt in a very, very long time.

He doesn’t say anything, simply grunts as he lets his hands moved up her abdomen. There’s a sudden movement, and a loud tearing noise, and it takes her a few seconds to realize that he has simply ripped her shirt right off.

She almost laughs; she’s really going to need to go clothes shopping after the last two days.

He’s breathing heavily, animal instinct taking over any other emotion, and right now, Emily’s not so sure that’s a bad thing. She’s still coming down off the high of last night’s adrenaline rush. This is exactly what she needs, but she’d be lying to herself if she said there weren’t other reasons for doing it.

He’s an attractive man; smooth skin, well toned abs. More importantly, though, he’s got a big heart underneath all the fur and trust issues.

Their lips crash together, and she can almost feel the air being sucked from her lungs. He hasn’t said anything at all since laying a hand on her arm; it kind of adds to the primal atmosphere. She’s not exactly stationary herself; it has been a _really_ long time.

She pushes him away briefly, ignoring the slight whimper he gives as she pulls the shirt over his head. Her hands run along his chest, taking in every muscle beneath the surface. His heart is beating wilding fast; she doesn’t even need vampire senses to know that much.

Emily gives a moan of pleasure as he lets their fingers intertwine, and pushes their bodies back together. Her breasts are up against his chest, and she a brief memory of the previous night, licking the blood from his wounds. Such sweet blood. She almost orgasms at the thought of it. Her fangs lengthen, and she almost goes straight for his neck before she comes to her senses and pulls away.

He growls softly, the sound low in his throat. A warning. It’s enough to tell her that if they were both more in touch with their animalistic sides, then the sex could be really, really fantastic. As it stands though, they’re both still trying to pretend that they’re human.

But then, humans don’t exactly break furniture when doing the dirty, she thinks, as he leads her back to the couch, and pushes her down with such force that the frame cracks beneath her. It doesn’t deter either of them, though. They’re both far too invested in this to stop now.

There’s a brief flurry of movement, and at the conclusion of it, Emily comes to the realization that she just isn’t destined to keep any article of clothing intact during her tenure with the BAU. The realization is short-lived though, because a few seconds later, he’s pushing inside of her, and she finds herself holding onto him for all she’s worth, nails digging into his shoulders. Not long after that, she’s crying out, the tremors rippling through her. Morgan’s still breathing heavily, but the release seems to have calmed him down somewhat. There’s a grin on his face, and if she weren’t still recovering, Emily might have given him words about being so damn smug.

The grin fades, and he kisses her again. This time it’s slow, and serious, and passionate. Everything a kiss should be, and yet everything they’ve managed to avoid so far.

Three hours later, they’re lying in his bed, which has remained mercifully undamaged. Though they’d been lying there a while, sleep hadn’t come for Emily. Morgan, however, is snoring away happily, and she almost regrets having to wake him up.

‘Derek…’ she says softly, her hand on his back. ‘Derek, you need to wake up.’ It feels strange calling him Derek, but it feels just as strange thinking of him by his last name after what they’ve just done.

‘What time is it?’ he murmurs, voice muffled by the pillow.

‘Almost four. You need to start getting ready – sunset’s in an hour.’

He grumbles a little, but pulls himself out of bed, and she’s treated to a free show as he goes in search of underwear.

‘Where’s the spell band?’ he asks her, and she almost rolls her eyes at the amnesic effect of the afternoon’s events.

‘I think you left it on the kitchen bench,’ she tells him, pulling on his t-shirt. ‘What?’ she asks, upon noticing the look he gives her. ‘Well I can’t wear mine, you tore it in half.’

He grins at that remark, grabbing at the spell band that’s lying on the kitchen counter. It’s pre-activated, so he doesn’t need to call in a sorcerer. All he needs to do is slap it on, which he does.

‘Feel anything?’ Emily asks, curious. Apparently the thing is supposed to control his animal instincts, but after seeing him in action, she knows it’s going to have a hell of a job.

‘Not really,’ he says, furrowing his brow. ‘A little hungry, maybe. A little, uh…achy.’

‘Oh, _you’re_ achy?’ she retorts with a smile. She’s hobbling a little bit, but it’s a good ache, and she’d much rather have it than not.

They talk for the next hour. Talk about silly things – the kind of things that don’t really come up when searching for a serial killer. To Emily it feels like what a normal life _should_ be. But then sunset hits, and she knows that this is always going to be anything _but_ normal.


	38. Chapter 38

The tension is thick in the air as Hotch and JJ wait in the foyer for Senator Richard Owens to make an appearance. He’s their last interview of the night, and Hotch will be pleased if it goes just a fraction better than the others. They’d filed the paperwork to pack a little extra heat tonight, and the two stake guns hadn’t exactly gone down well with their previous interviewees. Hostile though they may have been, none of them are responsible for the shapeshifter deaths.

Hotch hadn’t felt comfortable letting Reid out in the field after the previous night’s revelation, and at the same time, it didn’t feel right to leave him alone; Rossi had stayed behind with him. That accompanied with the full moon, means that it’s just the two of them. While he appreciates the time spent with JJ, he’d much prefer that it were in different circumstances.

‘Excuse me.’ He stands, signaling to the guard at the door. ‘We’ve been waiting for almost half an hour, is there some way to ensure that the Senator sees us some time tonight?’

The guard’s expression is blank. He isn’t a vampire, that much Hotch can tell. Why a vampire with such political power would rely on someone outside of his own species for protection is beyond Hotch. He already gets the impression – from newspaper articles, and the TV interviews – that Senator Owens is not exactly your typical bloodsucker. His regard transcends species; though vampires only make up a forty percent of the overall population, Owens has a public approval rating that’s through the roof. By comparison, his human opponent, Timothy Cutner, is woefully out of his league.

‘Senator Owens is a very busy man,’ the guard tells him, voice monotone. ‘You’re lucky you get to see him at all.’

‘Fourteen people are dead,’ Hotch tells the guard angrily. ‘I think that’s more important than any political game that’s going on.’

‘Politics is no trivial matter, Agent Hotchner,’ a voice interjects. ‘It might be a game, but that game is still a deathmatch.’ The voice comes from the other end of the foyer, where a well-dressed man descends the staircase. By all appearances, he looks as though he’s in his mid-thirties, but he gives off an air of experience that tells Hotch that he’s much, much older. That’s no secret though; Owens’ file puts at him at a few years shy of six-hundred.

Not quite as old as Emily, Hotch realizes, which is slightly disconcerting. Not as old as Elizabeth, either, which is even more disconcerting.

‘I apologize for my lateness.’ He looks Hotch in the eye – it’s a show of respect, rather than dominance. ‘As you’re no doubt aware, things have been somewhat hectic lately. Even without the tragic deaths of the shapeshifters.’

‘We would appreciate if you’d allow us to ask you some questions about those deaths,’ JJ says, inserting herself into the conversation. Owens looks at each of them in turn, and then nods.

‘Bruno, we’ll be in the sitting room,’ he tells the guard. Bruno does not argue, Hotch notes. He doesn’t even move.

Owens begins to speak the moment the door to the sitting room has clicked shut. ‘With all due respect, Agent Hotchner, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Committing murder this close to election? My approval rating would plummet. And really, murder isn’t my style.’

He gestures towards the sofa, but neither Hotch nor JJ feel comfortable sitting down. They’re ready to make a move if they need to.

‘But it is Elizabeth’s style, isn’t it?’

Owens gives a short laugh. ‘You and I both know that Elizabeth isn’t stupid enough to kill so blatantly. Politicians don’t succeed by using sledgehammers, Agent Hotchner. They succeed using scalpels.’

‘You don’t like her, do you?’ JJ interjects, brow furrowed.

He laughs again. ‘Of course not. But she knows where she stands with me; our arrangement is one of mutual gain. I can’t gain the support of the vampires without belonging to a clan, and my presence gives her some level of credibility.’

Hotch frowns. ‘You’re enabling her.’

‘To be honest, Agent Hotchner, I’m of the opinion that she would be a thousand times worse if not for my presence. The opportunity of power beyond being a clan leader keeps her in check, and she can’t get that if she goes on a killing spree.’

Hotch shakes his head, but it’s more to himself, than to anything that Owens is saying._ Power and politics. _

_Things would be so much easier without them._

‘You’re not like other vampires,’ he says, in lieu of anything else case-related. Owens has nothing to do with these murders.

‘There are a few of us,’ is the answer given, accompanied by a small shrug. ‘Sorcerer blood, werewolf blood. It dilutes the vampirism. Not as common, now that inbreeding has become the way of doing things. You know Emily, obviously. You’d never guess who her mother was if you didn’t already know.’

‘You’ve met Emily?’ asks JJ, frowning slightly.

‘In passing a few times. It’s her reputation amongst other vampires that I’m more familiar with. Make no mistake, she’s a good kid.’

Hotch raises an eyebrow. “Kid” seems a little condescending for someone that’s several centuries old. He brings this point up, and Owens gives another shrug.

‘She’s removed herself from vampire society altogether,’ he explains. ‘That cancels out any age advantage she might have. That’s-’

‘Politics,’ Hotch finishes, and Owens nods.

‘Like it or loathe it, you can’t ignore it.’


	39. Chapter 39

An hour later, it’s almost midnight, and they’re driving back to FBI headquarters. Hotch can’t help but feel that the whole evening had been something of a wash. Though they’d gained a little bit of insight into vampire politics, they’re no closer to discovering who had murdered their victims, and why this unsub had chosen to frame the Prentiss clan.

‘He was a droid,’ JJ says abruptly, bringing Hotch’s thought process to a halt.

‘Who was a droid?’

‘Bruno,’ she tells him. ‘The guard. I couldn’t hear a thing he was thinking.’ She pauses. ‘It was kind of…comforting.’

‘Is that normal?’ he frowns, slightly jealous at the fact that she feels more comfortable around a droid than she does around him.

‘I don’t know. Spence – Reid – is the only one I’ve spent a significant amount of time around, and I can read his thoughts if he’s thinking a little too hard. Which is most of the time.’

There’s a hint of sadness in her voice, and Hotch doesn’t need psychic powers to know why. ‘I was told that if he knew, he wouldn’t be able to function. That knowing he’s a machine would be too overwhelming for his mind to accept.’

‘I guess whoever told you that was wrong,’ she says softly, but it isn’t an accusation. She adds, with some pride, ‘He’s special.’

Hotch doesn’t dispute the claim – he knows it’s true. But he still wonders if maybe they’ve lost a friend through their deceit. He won’t be surprised in the least if Spencer Reid goes AWOL as soon as this case is solved. In fact, he’s expecting it.

But they have to solve the case first.

*          *          *

Emily tosses in her sleep.

She dreams.

She dreams of the past; of family, of defection, of exile. She dreams of every single moment that has brought her to this point, a slideshow of millisecond flashes. Flashes of blood, of death.

She wakes in a cold sweat, breathing heavily, but she doesn’t scream. She’s far too used to the nightmares to scream.

Even still, her companion raises his head and looks at her, giving a slight whimper. It seems wrong to see him so docile; as a human, even in a calm state, he gives off that undeniable air of strength. Now, there’s a weakness that she knows is killing him inside.

She’d left the room when he shifted, determined to give him some small amount of control that is otherwise absent. The sounds had been enough to keep her from wanting to watch at any point in the future. She’s seen it before, but it’s different when the wolf in question isn’t an enemy. _Very_ different when the wolf in question is someone she’s been intimate with.

Even though it had still been early, they’d both gone to sleep then, the events of the past two days having culminated in an undeniable exhaustion.

She feels a little uncomfortable sleeping in his bed with him in this form, but he had given her puppy-dog eyes (she can really find no other way to describe them) when she’d made to sleep on the couch. And that’s where she is now.

The full moon shines in through the open window, reflecting off Morgan’s dark, silken fur. It looks so soft, and she almost wants to run her fingers through it, but she knows that doing so would probably be pretty insulting.

‘I’m okay,’ she tells him, ‘Just a nightmare.’

He makes another small sound, and she realizes that she has no idea whether or not he can actually understand her in this form. His mind is in there somewhere, but whether his brain has retained its cognitive capacity, she is unsure. It’s something that she’s never bothered to find out.

He nuzzles up against her, his wet nose tickling a small patch of exposed skin. She takes a moment to look over his wolf form, and imagines what he’d usually be doing on a full moon night. Imagines the freedom of it. Freeing, but, at the same time, incapacitating. All species have their advantages and their disadvantages.

‘Thank-you,’ she whispers, only she’s not entirely sure what she’s saying thank-you for. Thank-you for lying here with me? Thank-you for trusting me? Thank-you for letting down your boundaries? Thank-you for helping me bring down mine?

On some level, it’s all of those things. In spite of recent events, this is the most human she’s felt in a long time.

And with that thought, she drifts slowly back to sleep.


	40. Chapter 40

He wakes to the smell of burning.

It’s a little past 7am, which means he’s human, and completely naked. Even without the extra sensitivity of his wolf-form nose, he can tell that the burning is definitely coming from his kitchen.

Immediately, his thoughts go to the worst possible scenario. Is their unsub targeting him now? Has the M.O. changed? Whoever the unsub is, they’d be forced to deal with Emily as well, which means that a silver knife isn’t exactly going to cut it. Fire is an equal opportunities offender.

Emily.

Shit. She’s not in the bedroom, which means that she’s in the attached living area, which means if there’s someone trying to attack them, then they’ve gotten to her already.

He grabs his gun from the bedside table, and, without a second thought about his state of dress, he rushes out there, ready to put a bullet into whoever’s trying to kill them.

‘Fuck!’

It’s Emily’s voice, and she sounds panicked. He rounds the corner, almost dropping his gun in surprise.

The stove’s on fire, and she’s attempting – with little success – to put the fire out. He realizes at this point that he never quite remembered to hang that fire blanket where it’s supposed to go. It’s still sitting in one of the kitchen drawers, underneath a pile of dish towels.

He jerks the drawer open, digging through the dish towels until he finds the bright red package. The package tears when he rips it open with a little more force than necessary, but he doesn’t really care about that.

The magic-infused blanket kicks into gear as soon as it hits the flames, sorcery and chemistry working together to put the fire out. He pulls Emily back, out of protective instinct, rather than any immediate danger.

‘Fuck,’ she says again, and this time her voice is softer, and a little shaky. ‘I swear, that stove is fucking possessed or something.’

‘It, ah…it takes a little getting used to,’ he says, unsure of whether he should be amused, angry, relieved, or some bizarre combination of the three. He settles on amused, because, the events of the past few days considered, it’s got an edge of dark humor to it.

‘You said you liked steaks.’ Her voice is steady now, but she hasn’t pulled away from him.

‘What?’

‘Yesterday, at the Lamia outpost, you said you liked half a dozen steaks the morning after the full moon.’ There’s a beat of silence. ‘I hope you like them well done.’

He shakes with silent laughter. ‘There’s a diner I usually go to on the way back from the Sanctuary. It’s not far from here.’ He kisses the top of her head softly. ‘Would you like to join me for breakfast?’

‘That’d be nice,’ she says. Her hands touch the fabric of her shirt – it’s actually his shirt, but she’s the one wearing it – and she adds, ‘I may need to borrow some clothes, though.’

He’s almost about to ask why before he remembers rendering both her shirt and pants nigh unwearable during their antics yesterday.

It takes ten minutes of searching through his closet to find something that will both fit her, and not make it painfully obvious that she is wearing his clothes.

She drives them the half-dozen blocks to the diner, because, though it hadn’t exactly been an active full moon, shifting still hurts like a bitch, and he’ll be sore for the next twelve hours at least. Emily’s limping a little bit as well; he doesn’t say anything, but feels the slightest surge of pride.

They take a booth near the back, their waitress at the table immediately. Morgan tips her a wink; Astrid works most post-full moon shifts, and doesn’t need to ask him what his order is going to be. She looks a little curious about his company, but it’s not a malicious curiosity.

‘Pancakes, please,’ Emily says, without even looking at the menu. ‘With peanut butter if you have it, but if not, maple and blueberries is fine. Small rat’s blood, to drink.’ She hands over her DHHS I.D, without which no vendor can legally sell her blood. Astrid takes a quick look at the card, and jots the ID number down at the bottom of the pad. The system’s designed to keep track of how much blood each vampire is consuming, but of course, the system doesn’t really always work like it’s supposed to. There are always people breaking the rules.

While they’re waiting on their order, Morgan lets his gaze wander. The headline of the newspaper on the stand by the door catches his eye. He hadn’t noticed it on their way in, but now the big black letters seem to burn into his retina.

_SENATOR QUESTIONED IN WEREWOLF MURDERS._

Shit.

JJ and Hotch had questioned Owens last night – how the press had managed to find that out, he’s not so sure. He digs in his pocket for change with which to buy the paper.

‘Shit.’ Emily expresses the same sentiment when he shows her. ‘This is _bad_.’

‘We need to get back to into work,’ Morgan agrees. He moves to get up, but Emily stops him.

‘No,’ she says firmly. ‘No way. You didn’t even have the strength to walk six blocks. Morgan, you can’t come in.’

‘You and I both know what will happen if this comes to a head. A vampire politician implicated in fourteen werewolf murders. There’ll be uprisings. There’ll be gang violence. We need as many people as possible to make sure this doesn’t blow up in everybody’s faces.’

‘Fine,’ she says, arms crossing over her chest. ‘But if Hotch asks, I had absolutely nothing to do with your decision.’ She pauses. ‘And we’re _not_ skipping breakfast.’


	41. Chapter 41

He calls Hotch while she drives them to the office. If he were paying attention, he would note that her driving is a little speedy, but it’s a precise kind of speed.

‘Hotch, it’s Morgan,’ he starts, and the Unit Chief cuts him off before he can speak any further.

‘_Did something happen?_’

‘No – we saw the headlines. Is Owens our guy?’

Hotch sighs, a sound distorted by the phone-line ‘_We_ did _interview him. But he didn’t do it._’

‘I don’t think the general public is going to care about that. The wolves want an enemy, and the media’s provided one for them.’

‘_I know. JJ’s called a press conference. Hopefully it should calm some things down, but we’ll still have hundreds of angry ‘wolves on our hands._’

Morgan nods. ‘I’ll call Andy – see if he can get the message out for everyone to remain calm. I’m not sure what good it’ll do, though. When these guys get angry…’

After the briefest exchange of pleasantries, he hangs up. The phone’s in his hand, but he doesn’t call Andy just yet. His mind is moving a hundred miles a second, and yet all the thoughts are racing by too fast for him to grasp a hold of one.

‘His approval ratings are going to plummet,’ says Emily matter-of-factly, executing a sharp turn that has Morgan grabbing onto the door for purchase.

…

Approval ratings.

‘You want to discredit a politician, what do you do?’ he asks her.

She turns to look at him for the shortest of seconds, her eyes filled with understanding. ‘You frame him for murder. Even if it’s not true, the public will still lose faith in him.’

‘Leaving the road clear for his opponent to take office.’ He has his phone up again, quickly dialing Andrew Lyman’s cell number. They need to stop this before the gang violence starts. Before more people start dying.

Emily shakes her head in disgust. ‘Politics,’ she mutters.

*          *          *

They rush into the bullpen, and Emily can’t help but notice the looks the vampires on the floor are giving them. It’s repulsion – not just at Morgan, at her, too. They can smell him on her. Sense the aftermath of her liaison. And they aren’t the only ones.

JJ’s hanging up her phone as they enter the conference room, and she takes one look at Emily, her eyes widening slightly. ‘God, you move fast.’

Emily’s brow furrows. She’d been blocking her thoughts, how had JJ managed to break through those barriers.

‘This isn’t a psychic thing, chica,’ says Garcia, flying in to greet Morgan with affection. ‘I can tell just by looking that you two got it on sometime in the last twenty-four hours. The way you’re standing, the fact that she’s wearing your clothes. The all-knowing Oracle doesn’t need superpowers.’

Rossi clears his throat, and Garcia stops talking immediately. There are bigger things at stake right now, no pun intended.

Emily rolls her eyes. ‘What do we have on the Owens front?’

‘Gang violence in a dozen cities country-wide, death toll is at seven confirmed so far,’ announces Reid, in a tone that seems slightly blank. ‘Census data shows that all of the cities in question have both a strong vampire and shapeshifter presence.’

‘Swing states,’ Emily says, nodding. She turns to Morgan. ‘Did you want to…?’

‘I’ve got a theory,’ he announces, taking the lead she passes on. ‘The moment we connected the deaths, William LaMontagne shows up, pointing us right towards the Prentiss clan. It seems _way_ too convenient, especially now that we’ve established that none of them were involved in the killings. What if someone _wanted_ us to investigate them, specifically so they could discredit Owens?’

‘But then why use us?’ asks JJ, ‘We’re not simply going to let go of this. We _know _Owens didn’t do this.’

‘Even an accusation will shake the foundations,’ Morgan insists.

‘No, JJ’s right,’ argues Rossi. ‘If they’re going to go to the lengths of implicating Owens, then they aren’t going to want the “finest minds in the FBI” on the case.’

‘We weren’t supposed to survive,’ Emily says softly. ‘They figured that if we investigated the Prentiss clan, we weren’t going to make it out alive.’

‘They couldn’t have predicted that. Prentiss has toed the line in the past,’ Rossi says.

There’s a brief moment of silence, before Hotch speaks.

‘Then you make sure you send in the one person you know she wants to kill.’

Emily’s head jerks up.

‘They couldn’t have known Emily was going to be there.’

‘They could,’ whispers Emily. ‘If they put me on the team just for that.’

It’s the horrific thought that has never quite left her mind. She doesn’t belong here. She doesn’t belong anywhere.

‘We can’t know that,’ says Morgan sharply, laying a hand on her arm.

She shakes her head, but doesn’t respond to his statement. Instead, she turns to Hotch. ‘Do we know who signed off on my transfer?’ she asks.

‘No. Section Chief Strauss told me that it came from above her, but she’s not above deceit. Garcia, could you…’

‘On it, bossman.’ The fairy zips to the laptop that’s sitting at the end of the table. After a few moments of tapping, she says, in a low tone, ‘Oh my stars and garters.’

‘Garcia…’ says JJ.

‘You’re right,’ the tech says with disbelief. ‘Erin Strauss is not above deceit. Records tell me that she signed off on the transfer order of one Special Agent Emily Prentiss. Looks like the Section Chief really is an evil bitch after all.’


	42. Chapter 42

David Rossi knocks on the door to Erin Strauss’ office. There’s a sheet of paper in his hand – an arrest warrant for one Senator Richard Owens. They have no intention of using the warrant. They just need Strauss to think that they’re going to arrest Owens for the murder of fourteen werewolves.

‘David,’ she says, her voice taking on a tone that seems to be warm and yet cold at the same time. ‘Come in.’

He lays the sheet of paper on her desk, and watches as the gears roll. She has a carefully constructed look of surprise, as if she really hadn’t been aware of Owens’s involvement, or rather, lack thereof.

‘We need your signature so we can put Owens away for good,’ he tells her, putting his characteristic dramatic flair on the words. ‘All of these murders coincide with the Senator’s campaign trail. He was in every one of those cities when the respective murders took place. He hasn’t confessed, but we’re confident that he fits our profile.’ The campaign trail data is something that they’d discovered after the fact, but by that time, they had already been at the point where nothing was going to convince them of Owens’s guilt.

David Rossi is hoping like hell that they’re right.

She makes a show of reading over the paper, and then signs it without argument. He figures if she really hadn’t been involved, she probably would have made a little more fuss about the prospect of them arresting the man slated to be the next President.

That’s politics for you.

She hands the paper back with a smile. He thanks her, and bids his farewell.

As he leaves, he can see her picking up the phone out of the corner of her eye.

*          *          *

They’ve just finished setting up the wiretap, when a second white blur zips into the room. Emily’s not surprised to find the fairy landing on her shoulder.

‘I didn’t think you’d be interested in BAU politics,’ she says drily.

‘You kidding?’ the fairy asks her. ‘A chance to watch the wicked witch go down? Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

In spite of herself, she smiles. ‘Guys, this is Kevin. He does IT for Internal Affairs.’

‘And he’s also the guy that signed off on your wiretap. I owe you nothing now, you hear me? Nothing.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘It’s a wiretap,’ she says. ‘A fully legitimate wiretap. It’s not as though I asked you to do anything illegal, or immoral. Like hack into DHHS databases.’

‘Oh. _Cold_.’ He hovers about her shoulder for a bit, before flying over to the desk to stand next to Garcia. ‘Hi.’

‘What exactly did you do for him?’ Morgan asks softly, watching as the two fairies introduce themselves.

‘He hacked into the DHHS database, I caught him. Got him a job with the FBI instead of sending him off to the coal mines.’

‘Oh! She’s making a call,’ says Garcia from the desk, tapping a key to start recording.

‘_This is Randall._’

‘_Randall, Strauss here. I have news.’_

‘_I saw the headlines, Erin. Owens’s approval ratings are already starting to go down. Slowly, sure, but they’re going down._’

‘_They’ll go down pretty quickly now, Randall. I just signed a warrant for Richard Owens’s arrest._’

The man named Randall gives a low laugh. ‘_Excellent._’

‘_I’ve carried out my end of the bargain, Randall._’

‘_Yes, yes. As soon as Cutner is inducted, you’ll get your promotion. I’ve no doubt you’ll be heading up the Bureau in no time._’

The two exchange pleasantries that sound anything but pleasant, before the call is terminated.

‘Randall,’ says Hotch. ‘Look him up, Garcia.’

‘Like the wind, bossman.’ There’s nothing but the sound of tapping for a few seconds, and then. ‘Philip Randall, campaign manager for one Timothy Cutner. Financial records have _fourteen_ payments of fifty-thousand dollars made to various accounts.’

Morgan frowns. ‘Wouldn’t he have hidden those transactions a little better?’

‘He was unaware of my hacking kung-fu,’ says Garcia, with some pride. ‘They were hidden. I unhid them.’

He grins. ‘That’s my girl.’


	43. Chapter 43

It’s not long before David Rossi finds himself entering Erin Strauss’ office for the second time in as many hours. This time, he’s not alone. He has Hotch, and an agent from Internal Affairs, who had introduced himself as Peter Myers. He’s surprised at how quickly Myers had managed to grasp the situation. With any luck, Strauss and her associates will be behind bars before sun-down. There are agents waiting just outside, should anything get out of hand.

‘What’s going on?’ asks Strauss sharply, standing at the sight of the three agents entering her office without knocking. Hotch gives Rossi a slight nod. He knows that if the Unit Chief were to conduct this conversation himself, it could end very badly. The Aaron Hotchner wrath is not something to be taken lightly.

‘We’ve got a little something you might like to hear.’ He sets his phone on the desk in front of the angered Section Chief, pressing a single button. The conversation that had been recorded plays out in full, Strauss’ face becoming paler by the second. By the end of it, she looks as undead as her status implies.

‘Is that all you have?’ she asks coldly. ‘Really, David. You know as well as I do that recordings can be faked.’

‘Recordings can be faked, sure,’ he shrugs. ‘But that’s not all we have. We have a paper trail – our technical analyst is far better than any hacker you could hire to cover it up – and we have the three required signatures to allow a telepath to sit in on all relevant interrogations. You’re screwed six ways to Sunday, Erin. The best power trip you can hope for is getting the top bunk in your prison cell.’

She’s still a little shocked by the situation, as evidenced by the fact that she doesn’t say a damn word when Myers cuffs her. That said, Rossi knows that the legal battle that’s sure to follow won’t be a particularly clean one. It never is when politics is involved, and this case has politics coming from every angle. They’ll be feeling the fallout for months.

That becomes clearer than ever when Hotch gets a phone call as they’re on their way to suit up for the raid. He has a pained look on his face, and Rossi can only assume that it’s not good news.

‘All due respect sir, these people are responsible for murder. That is a felony, and they _will_ be arrested, no matter their political affiliation. Yes, I understand that, but this raid will go ahead as planned, and the people that killed fourteen werewolves _will_ be brought to justice.’ His voice is laced with anger, and the Hotchner wrath is coming out in spades.

‘I have three words for you then, sir. Fidelity, bravery, integrity.’ Without waiting for an answer, he snaps the phone shut with noticeable rage.

‘Director?’

He nods, his lips tight. ‘Let’s suit up,’ is all he says.

*          *          *

Cutner’s entourage, campaign manager included, is mostly human, but the raid team is prepared for a small scale war involving any number of species. They’ve learnt from the last time they’d gone into a hostile setting unprepared, and just as with the previous night’s meeting with Owens, they’re not going to take any chances.

Both Emily and Morgan insist on going on the raid, though both of them have physical issues that would normally preclude their presence. Reid, by contrast, is far less enthusiastic, and doesn’t seem to argue when Hotch tells him to sit out. The Unit Chief is fairly sure that by the time they get back, Reid will be gone. In search for answers. He’s already forewarned Garcia, who has been instructed to keep the feelers out; not enough to invade his privacy, but just so they can make sure he doesn’t get himself killed.

Though protocol dictates that the SWAT team go in first, but they’re hoping to do this without making too much of a scene. It’s bad enough that they have to go in there fully armed, and vested up. The vests will stop bullets, fireballs and most other forms of energy attacks, but there are at least two hundred members of Cutner’s campaign in the office, and Hotch is betting on the fact that they won’t be very happy to see five armed FBI agents, and the dozen or so SWAT team members crashing the party.

Warrant in hand, Hotch opens the door, and walks straight to the receptionist’s desk. ‘I have an arrest warrant for Philip Randall,’ he tells the secretary, who looks at him as though he’s grown several extra heads, all of which are singing the National Anthem.

‘His office is the first on the left,’ the secretary tells him, too stunned to say anything else.

‘Thank-you for your co-operation, Miss Schuler,’ he says, looking at the name plate on the desk. ‘We’d appreciate if you stayed around – we will be required to question all employees for the purposes of our investigation.’

She gives a nod, confused, but not about to argue the situation with the man that’s carrying a gun that could kill her in a second.

He walks down to the first office on the left, followed by the rest of the team. He knocks on the open door. The man sitting at the desk looks up, and before he even says anything, Hotch knows they have their mastermind.

‘Philip Randall, you are under arrest-’ He doesn’t even get partway through the well-rehearsed script before Randall is on the move. Not missing a beat, Rossi takes him out with a plain energy blast.

‘What’s going on in here?’

‘Senator Cutner.’ JJ takes the lead, the liaison superseding all else for the moment. ‘Agent Jareau, Federal Bureau of Investigation. We have an arrest warrant for Mr. Randall; he’s being taken into custody. We’re going to have to ask you a few questions.’

Cutner’s mouth opens and closes, without him making the smallest sound. He slumps against the wall, head in his hands. Hotch isn’t sure if the Senator knows about the conspiracy, but either way, he won’t be entering the office of President any time soon.

For him, it’s over.

For the team, it’s just begun.


	44. Chapter 44

They get back to FBI headquarters, weary though it’s not even noon yet. The paperwork will take them most of the rest of the day, but afterwards, they’ve been ordered not to come into the office for a minimum of five days. It’s an order that’s been signed off on by the Deputy Director, who had apparently ordered an inquiry into their investigation. Vu Ganash had intercepted them on their way back to the BAU offices, assuring Hotch that the enquiry is simply a formality, and is no way a reflection of their actions. It’s unsurprising, considering the potential repercussions of their investigation.

It’s for that reason that they see Hotch leaving his office half an hour later, briefly informing them of his meeting on the twenty-fifth floor. He has a handful of files in one hand, and a sheet of paper in their other – Reid’s request for leave, he tells them, which he’ll be dropping off at HR on his way back, already marked with his signature of approval.

The request for leave had simply been a formality, Emily gathers, because Reid has already cleared his things and left. She’s not sure when he’ll be back, and she’s pretty sure no-one else does either. Coming to terms with your true identity isn’t the easiest process. Emily’s pretty sure she _still_ hasn’t come to terms with hers, and she’s been working at it for several centuries.

Morgan’s the only other one in the bullpen; both JJ and Rossi are in their respective offices, as exhausted as everyone else.

‘Hey.’ He swivels on his chair to face her. ‘Did you want to grab dinner tonight?’ She gives a wan smile at the question. Not two days ago, he had been reluctant to even be in the same room with her. Now he’s asking if she wants to grab dinner. His trust is hard to get, but it once you’ve got it…She feels her lower abdomen twinge, a reminder of the knife in the gut she’d taken to earn his trust.

‘As long as we can eat in,’ she tells him. ‘And as long as we can do it at my place.’ Before he has a chance to ask, she elaborates briefly. ‘I really need to wear my own clothes.’ She looks down somewhat disdainfully at the ill-fitting jeans he had lent her.

‘There’s nothing wrong with my clothes,’ he says, feigning offence.

‘The problem is, they’re designed to fit your ass, not mine,’ she retorts.

He tilts his head slightly. ‘I’d need to take a closer look in order to make a judgment call.’

‘No sexual harassment during work hours,’ she warns him, only half-joking. He really is a good guy, once you get past the barriers he’s put up, but she can’t have herself distracted while she’s working. A lifetime of experience has taught her how to be detached, but she doesn’t want to be that person anymore, which is why she hasn’t rejected him altogether.

He seems to notice the serious tone the conversation has taken, and responds accordingly. ‘I know there’s a lot that you’ve been through that I’ll never know, and I can’t promise I’ll always understand. But I’m going to try.’

She nods, not quite able to think of the words to say how much his acceptance means to her. ‘Thank-you,’ she settles on, her voice soft. ‘And likewise.’

The rest of the paperwork seems like a cakewalk in comparison.

*          *          *

She catches him as he’s getting off the elevator from the twenty-fifth floor. Even without the wave of emotion that’s pulsating off of him, she would have been able to know that he’s not particularly happy simply by looking into his eyes. The rest of his face is as still as ever.

‘Hey.’ She greets him with a warm smile that’s reciprocated, if a little unenthusiastically.

‘Hey.’

‘How did it go upstairs?’

He sighs, which tells her all that she needs to know.

‘That bad?’

‘We’ve pissed off a lot of people in the search for justice,’ he says flatly. ‘Most of whom don’t seem to care that Randall organized fourteen deaths in order to benefit Cutner.’

‘But he’s being prosecuted, right?’ JJ asks, almost fearful to listen to the answer that his mind keeps drumming out.

‘He is,’ Hotch confirms. ‘But there’s going to be backlash; this, combined with the papers trying to slam Owens. It’s going to be a very busy few weeks, I think. I’ll be surprised if we actually get to take the five days off they’ve ordered us to take.’

‘Well in that case,’ JJ says, with the tiniest of sighs. ‘In that case, I might go home and get as much sleep as I can before we’re called in.’ Part of her wants to ask if he’s willing to join her, but they’re both tired, and she figures that if they went home together then sleep would probably be the last thing on the agenda. Still, it’s a possibility, considering she’s 99% sure that Garcia’s getting a ride home with her new fairy friend tonight.

‘Would you like to go out sometime?’ he blurts out, and it seems almost strange to see him so flustered. Her thoughts had been so focused elsewhere, she hadn’t even noticed the question at the edges of his mind.

‘Yes,’ she says, and the resulting smile on his face is almost enough to counterbalance the seriousness of the last two days.

Almost, but not quite.

*          *          *

He gets up, feeling the exhaustion of the case wash over him. He’s been home for two hours, and yet the betrayal hasn’t quite sunk in yet.

The team had lied to him. His friends – his _family­ _– had lied to him. He feels a mix of emotions – anger, sadness, shock – and yet logically, he knows that there is no possible way that he could be feeling those emotions.

He knows the data. He has an eidetic memory (a hard drive?). Artificial intelligence is nowhere near this level, and yet at the same time, he knows that it’s true. He concentrates, and he can feel that there really isn’t a heart-beat there. He tries to think of the last time he had bled, and he honestly can’t remember. Who’s to say he _isn’t _a robot?

He goes to the kitchen, pulling a carving knife from his cutlery drawer. He remembers carving a roast chicken for his mother. He had been thirteen years old, and so proud that he had managed to cook the difficult dish without burning the house down. His mother had been bed-ridden at the time, with delusions so severe, that he’d had to call the doctor twice to sedate her. She’d spat the chicken out, declaring it poison.

Is it even a real memory? Is it just a fake one, implanted to make him seem more human? He almost wants to vomit at that thought, but isn’t sure if he’s actually capable of vomiting. It’s one thing to make a robot think he’s human, but quite another to implant him with such a horrific past.

He takes the knife, and makes a deep cut down his left forearm. He closes his eyes against the pain, and wonders what the point is, of having pain receptors. If they can be removed, why not remove them?

He opens his eyes, immediately seeing the glint of silver beneath his skin. He makes a pair of perpendicular cuts at either end of the vertical one and peels the skin backwards, revealing a streamlined collection of wires and other electronics. He clenches his fist, watching as the machinery moves like clockwork. His mouth opens in wonder, his curiosity at how the arm works overridden by the horror of the situation.

He’s a robot.

A machine.

He isn’t human.

The knife clatters to the floor, and he feels himself shaking. In his distracted state, he doesn’t notice the footsteps making their way across the room. He doesn’t notice the intruders until they’re standing right in front of him.

‘Dr. Reid,’ a voice says, its owner shrouded in darkness. ‘We need you to come with us, please.’

He wants to fight back, but he can’t, his body (is it really _his _body?) rebelling against him. He doesn’t even manage to get a single hit in before he’s knocked unconscious.

The End.


End file.
